Michael Lewis

After attending the London School of Economics, he began a career on Wall Street during the 1980s as a bond salesman at Salomon Brothers. The experience prompted him to write his first book, Liar's Poker (1989). Fourteen years later, Lewis wrote Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (2003), in which he investigated the success of the Oakland Athletics of Major League Baseball and their general manager Billy Beane. His 2006 book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game was his first to be adapted into a film, The Blind Side (2009). In 2010, he released The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. The film adaptation of Moneyball was released in 2011, followed by The Big Short in 2015. Lewis's books have won two Los Angeles Times Book Prizes and several have reached number one on 'The New York Times Best Seller list, including his most recent book, Going Infinite (2023).

• Name — Michael Lewis • Birth Name — Michael Monroe Lewis • Born — 15 October 1960 • Birthplace — New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. • Occupation — Nonfiction writer, journalist • Education — Princeton University (BA) London School of Economics (MSc) • Period — 1989–present • Notable Works — * Liar's Poker (1989) • Moneyball (2003) • The Blind Side (2006) • The Big Short (2010) • Website — michaellewiswrites.com Michael Monroe Lewis (born October 15, 1960) is an American author and financial journalist. He has also been a contributing editor to Vanity Fair since 2009, writing mostly on business, finance, and economics. He is known for his nonfiction work, particularly his coverage of financial crises and behavioral finance. Lewis was born in New Orleans and attended Princeton University, from which he graduated with a degree in art history. After attending the London School of Economics, he began a career on Wall Street during the 1980s as a bond salesman at Salomon Brothers. The experience prompted him to write his first book, Liar's Poker (1989). Fourteen years later, Lewis wrote Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (2003), in which he investigated the success of the Oakland Athletics of Major League Baseball and their general manager Billy Beane. His 2006 book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game was his first to be adapted into a film, The Blind Side (2009). In 2010, he released The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. The film adaptation of Moneyball was released in 2011, followed by The Big Short in 2015. Lewis's books have won two Los Angeles Times Book Prizes and several have reached number one on 'The New York Times Best Seller list, including his most recent book, Going Infinite (2023).

Lewis was born in New Orleans, the son of corporate attorney J. Thomas Lewis and community activist Diana Monroe Lewis. He is a descendant of the early-19th-century Louisiana judge Joshua Lewis. He went to Isidore Newman School. He later attended Princeton University and graduated cum laude with a BA in art and archaeology in 1982 after completing a 166-page senior thesis titled "Donatello and the Antique." At Princeton, Lewis was a member of the Ivy Club. He briefly worked with New York City art dealer Daniel Wildenstein. In an interview with Charlie 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. Lewis subsequently enrolled at the London School of Economics and received an MSc(Econ) in economics in 1985. He was hired by Salomon Brothers, stayed for a while in New York City for its training program, and then relocated to London, where he worked at its London office as a bond salesman for a few years. He has said that the journalism from this era found in The Economist and The Wall Street Journal inspired him to explore becoming a writer.

Lewis described his experiences at Salomon and the evolution of the mortgage-backed bond in Liar's Poker (1989). In The New New Thing (1999), he investigated the then-booming Silicon Valley and the obsession with innovation. Four years later, Lewis wrote Moneyball (2003), in which he investigated the success of Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics. In August 2007, he wrote an article about catastrophe bonds, "In Nature's Casino", that ran in The New York Times Magazine. Lewis has worked for The Spectator, The New York Times Magazine, as a columnist for Bloomberg, as a senior editor and campaign correspondent to The New Republic, and a visiting fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. He wrote the Dad Again column for Slate. Lewis worked for Conde Nast Portfolio, but in February 2009 left to join Vanity Fair, where he became a contributing editor. In September 2011, after the successful release of the film adaptation of Moneyball, 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 a Liar's Poker film. During 2013 in Vanity Fair, Lewis wrote on the injustice of the prosecution of ex-Goldman Sachs programmer Sergey Aleynikov, who is given an entire chapter in Flash Boys. Flash Boys, which looked at high-frequency trading of Wall Street and other markets, was released in March 2014. Lewis's 2015 Vanity Fair article "How Tom Wolfe Became... Tom Wolfe", about the journalist and writer Tom Wolfe, became the basis for the documentary film Radical Wolfe, directed by Richard Dewey and released in 2023. In 2016, Lewis published The Undoing Project, chronicling the close academic collaboration and personal relationship between Israeli psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel 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 for Vanity Fair in which he described the Trump administration's approach to various federal agencies, including the Department of Energy and the Department of Agriculture. 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. That material was incorporated into Lewis's book The Fifth Risk, which was on the New York Times nonfiction best-seller list for 14 weeks, 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 added Commerce among the main departments described. In 2018, Lewis wrote and narrated The Coming Storm for Audible Studios, which released the short nonfiction story as part of its new Audible Originals series of audiobooks. In 2023, he wrote Going Infinite, about the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, its CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, and what came to be the collapse of FTX.

Lewis's podcast, Against the Rules, first aired on April 2, 2019. 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". The show often refers to the growing social distrust for authority, and refers to different types of public officials as "referees." Against the Rules is produced by Pushkin Industries, the media company founded by journalist Malcolm Gladwell and former Slate executive Jacob Weisberg. On January 12, 2020, Lewis appeared as one of the castaways on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs.

Lewis has been married three times. He married his first wife, Diane deCordova Lewis, in 1985. His second marriage was to former CNBC correspondent Kate Bohner; they got engaged three weeks after their first date. In October 1997, he married former MTV reporter Tabitha Soren. Lewis and Soren had three children. Lewis and Soren live in the Oakland Hills above Berkeley, California. Lewis is an atheist.