Michael Lewis | |
|---|---|
 Lewis in 2009 | |
| Born | Michael Monroe Lewis (1960-10-15)October 15, 1960 (age 65) New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. |
| Occupation | Nonfiction writer, journalist |
| Alma mater | Princeton University (BA) London School of Economics (MSc) |
| Period | 1989–present |
| Notable works |
|
| Spouse | |
| Website | |
| michaellewiswrites | |
Michael Monroe Lewis (born October 15, 1960)[1][2] is an American author andfinancial journalist.[3] He has also been a contributing editor toVanity Fair since 2009, writing mostly on business, finance, and economics. He is known for his nonfiction work, particularly his coverage of financial crises andbehavioral finance.
Lewis was born inNew Orleans and attendedPrinceton University, from which he graduated with a degree inart history. After attending theLondon School of Economics, he began a career onWall Street during the 1980s as a bond salesman atSalomon Brothers. The experience prompted him to write his first book,Liar's Poker (1989). Fourteen years later, Lewis wroteMoneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (2003), in which he investigated the success of theOakland Athletics ofMajor League Baseball and their general managerBilly Beane. His 2006 bookThe Blind Side: Evolution of a Game was his first to be adapted into a film,The Blind Side (2009). In 2010, he releasedThe Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. The film adaptation ofMoneyball was released in 2011, followed byThe Big Short in 2015.
Lewis's books have won twoLos Angeles Times Book Prizes and several have reached number one onThe New York Times Best Seller list, including his most recent book,Going Infinite (2023).[4]
Lewis was born inNew Orleans, the son ofcorporate attorney J. Thomas Lewis andcommunity activist Diana Monroe Lewis.[5] He is a descendant of the early-19th-century Louisiana judgeJoshua Lewis.[6] He went toIsidore Newman School. He later attendedPrinceton University and graduatedcum laude with a BA in art and archaeology in 1982 after completing a 166-page senior thesis titled "Donatello and the Antique."[7] At Princeton, Lewis was a member of theIvy Club.[1] He briefly worked with New York City art dealerDaniel Wildenstein. In an interview withCharlie Rose, Lewis said that his initial ambition was to become an art historian, but he was quickly dissuaded once he realized that there would be no jobs available for art historians and that even the handful that existed did not pay well.[8]
Lewis subsequently enrolled at theLondon School of Economics and received anMSc(Econ) ineconomics in 1985.[9][10] He was hired bySalomon Brothers, stayed for a while in New York for its training program, and then relocated toLondon, where he worked at its London office as a bond salesman for a few years.[11] He has said that the journalism from this era found inThe Economist andThe Wall Street Journal inspired him to explore becoming a writer.[12]
Lewis described his experiences at Salomon and the evolution of themortgage-backed bond inLiar's Poker (1989). InThe New New Thing (1999), he investigated the then-boomingSilicon Valley and the obsession with innovation. Four years later, Lewis wroteMoneyball (2003), in which he investigated the success ofBilly Beane and theOakland Athletics. In August 2007, he wrote an article aboutcatastrophe bonds, "In Nature's Casino", that ran inThe New York Times Magazine.[13]
Lewis has worked forThe Spectator,[2]The New York Times Magazine, as a columnist forBloomberg, as a senior editor and campaign correspondent toThe New Republic,[14] and a visiting fellow at theUniversity of California, Berkeley. He wrote theDad Again column forSlate. Lewis worked forConde Nast Portfolio, but in February 2009 left to joinVanity Fair, where he became a contributing editor.[15][16]
In September 2011, after the successful release of thefilm adaptation ofMoneyball, it was reported that Lewis planned to take on "a much more active role in the what could be the next film based on one of his books" and would start writing a script for aLiar's Poker film.[17][18]
During 2013 inVanity Fair, Lewis wrote on the injustice of the prosecution of ex-Goldman Sachs programmerSergey Aleynikov,[19] who is given an entire chapter inFlash Boys.[20]Flash Boys, which looked athigh-frequency trading of Wall Street and other markets, was released in March 2014.[21]
Lewis's 2015Vanity Fair article "How Tom Wolfe Became ... Tom Wolfe", about the journalist and writerTom Wolfe, became the basis for the documentary filmRadical Wolfe, directed by Richard Dewey and released in 2023.[22]
In 2016, Lewis publishedThe Undoing Project, chronicling the close academic collaboration and personal relationship between Israeli psychologistsAmos Tversky andDaniel Kahneman. The duo found systemic errors in human judgment under uncertainty, with implications for models of decision-making in fields such as economics, medicine, and sports.
In 2017, Lewis wrote a series of articles forVanity Fair in which he described theTrump administration's approach to various federal agencies, including theDepartment of Energy and theDepartment of Agriculture.[23] His articles described a sense of incredulity and disillusionment from career civil servants, particularly because of the Trump administration's lack of attention to some of their work, and the lack of care, knowledge, experience, and respect from Trump political appointees.[24]
That material was incorporated into Lewis's bookThe Fifth Risk, which was on theNew York Times nonfiction best-seller list for 14 weeks,[25] and described the disconnect between the Obama administration's well-prepared transition plans and the incoming Trump administration's apparent lack of concern. Along with Energy and Agriculture, this book addedCommerce among the main departments described.
In 2018, Lewis wrote and narratedThe Coming Storm forAudible Studios, which released the short nonfiction story as part of its new Audible Originals series ofaudiobooks.[26]
In 2023, he wroteGoing Infinite, aboutthe cryptocurrency exchange FTX, its CEO,Sam Bankman-Fried, and what came to be thecollapse of FTX.[27][28]
Lewis's podcast,Against the Rules, first aired on April 2, 2019.[29] The first season comprised seven episodes, each taking on a different aspect of society addressing the concept of fairness "in realms ranging from art authentication to consumer finance".[30][31] The show often refers to the growing social distrust for authority,[32] and refers to different types of public officials as "referees."[33]Against the Rules is produced byPushkin Industries, the media company founded by journalistMalcolm Gladwell and formerSlate executiveJacob Weisberg.
On January 12, 2020, Lewis appeared as one of the castaways onBBC Radio 4'sDesert Island Discs.[34]
In a review ofMoneyball, Dan Ackman ofForbes said that Lewis had a special talent: "He can walk into an area already mined by hundreds of writers and find gems there all along but somehow missed by his predecessors".[35] ANew York Times piece said that "no one writes with more narrative panache about money and finance than Mr. Lewis", praising his ability to use his subject's stories to show the problems with the systems around them.[36]
Critics from outside thefinancial industry have criticized Lewis for what they consider inaccuracies in his writing. In a 2011 column inThe Atlantic, American journalist and sports authorAllen Barra took issue with Lewis's characterization ofMajor League Baseball inMoneyball, writing, "From a historical standpoint, Lewis is, well, way off base. By the end of the 20th century baseball had achieved a greater level of competitive balance than at any time in the game's history...Moneyball doesn't just get the state of present-day baseball wrong; it also misrepresents the history of the sport."[37]
Lewis'sFlash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt ignited a new round of controversy surroundinghigh-frequency trading. At aHouse Financial Services Committee hearing in April 2014,Mary Jo White, a former Wall Street insider (as a Debevoise & Plimpton lawyer primarily for Wall Street financial firms)[38] who later served as theU.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair, denied the book's premise, saying, "The markets are not rigged".[39] In June 2014, White announced that theSEC would undergo a new round of regulatory review in response to concerns aboutdark pools and market structure.[40]
Book critics widely praised Lewis'sThe Undoing Project,[41] withGlenn C. Altschuler writing in thePittsburgh Post-Gazette that it "may well be his best book".[42]
His 2023 bookGoing Infinite, an intimate account ofSam Bankman-Fried and his firmFTX, was written while FTX was collapsing and published the dayBankman-Fried's trial on charges of fraud and money laundering began. Lewis was criticized for giving Bankman-Fried's explanations for FTX's losses excessive deference, with journalistMichael Hiltzik calling the Bankman-Fried hype a "torrent of nonsense".The New York Times wrote of Lewis's extensive access to Bankman-Fried that he had "a front-row seat—from which he could apparently see nothing."[43][44][45] Others praised Lewis's storytelling, withThe New Yorker calling the book "stupefyingly pleasurable" to read and filling "many gaps" in the story, ultimately predicting that the book "may one day be regarded as either the pinnacle or the nadir of his career".[46]
Lewis has been married three times. He married his first wife, Diane deCordova Lewis, in 1985.[1] His second marriage was to formerCNBC correspondentKate Bohner; they got engaged three weeks after their first date.[47][48][49] In October 1997, he married formerMTV reporterTabitha Soren. Lewis and Soren had three children.[50][51]
In 2021, their second child, Dixie, was a passenger in a head-on collision with a semi truck nearTruckee, California; the driver, her boyfriend, had inexplicably crossed the median. Both Dixie and her boyfriend were pronounced dead at the scene.[52]
Lewis and Soren live in the Oakland Hills aboveBerkeley, California.[53][54] Lewis is anatheist.[55]
A former Goldman Sachs computer programmer convicted of stealing source code from the firm was sentenced on Friday to more than eight years in prison, capping a case that had shone a rare spotlight on the world of lightning-fast computer-driven trading.
