Michael Lewis

Michael Lewis
Born	Michael Monroe Lewis 15 10, 1960
Birthplace	New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Nonfiction writer, journalist
Known for	Liar's Poker, Moneyball, The Blind Side, The Big Short, Flash Boys, Going Infinite
Education	Princeton University (BA) London School of Economics (MSc)
Awards	Los Angeles Times Book Prize (two wins)
Website	[[michaellewiswrites.com michaellewiswrites.com] Official site]

Michael Monroe Lewis (born October 15, 1960) is an American author and financial journalist whose work has illuminated the inner workings of Wall Street, professional sports, and behavioral economics for a broad readership. Born and raised in New Orleans, Lewis rose to prominence with his debut book Liar's Poker (1989), a partly autobiographical account of his years as a bond salesman at Salomon Brothers during the 1980s. He went on to write a succession of bestselling nonfiction books, including Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (2003), The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game (2006), The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (2010), Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt (2014), The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds (2016), and Going Infinite (2023). Several of these works have been adapted into major motion pictures. Lewis has served as a contributing editor to Vanity Fair since 2009, writing primarily on business, finance, and economics. His books have won two Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, and several have reached number one on The New York Times Best Seller list.

Early Life

Michael Monroe Lewis was born on October 15, 1960, in New Orleans, Louisiana. He grew up in New Orleans, a city whose culture and social milieu would later inform portions of his writing. His upbringing in the American South provided the backdrop for his later exploration of subjects such as football culture in The Blind Side.

Details about Lewis's parents and family background during his childhood years in New Orleans have been noted in biographical profiles. Lewis has spoken in interviews about growing up in a comfortable environment in the city, attending local schools before pursuing higher education in the Northeast.

Education

Lewis attended Princeton University, where he studied art history and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree. His time at Princeton coincided with the early 1980s, a period of significant expansion in the American financial industry. After graduating from Princeton, Lewis enrolled at the London School of Economics (LSE), where he earned a Master of Science degree in economics. His graduate studies in London positioned him at the intersection of finance and academia, and it was during this period that he was recruited into the world of investment banking — a career turn that would prove pivotal not only for his professional trajectory but for the subject matter of his literary debut.

Career

Wall Street and Liar's Poker (1985–1989)

After completing his studies at the London School of Economics, Lewis was hired as a bond salesman at Salomon Brothers, one of the most prominent investment banks on Wall Street during the 1980s. He worked at the firm during a period of extraordinary upheaval and excess in the bond markets, witnessing firsthand the aggressive trading culture and the rise of mortgage-backed securities that would later become central to the 2008 financial crisis.

Lewis's experiences at Salomon Brothers became the basis for his first book, Liar's Poker (1989). The book offered a candid, often darkly humorous account of life inside one of Wall Street's most powerful firms, describing the rituals, hierarchies, and reckless risk-taking that characterized the era. Liar's Poker was both a memoir and an exposé, drawing on Lewis's own observations as a young salesman navigating a world of outsized egos and questionable ethics. The book became a bestseller and established Lewis as a prominent voice in financial journalism.

The success of Liar's Poker allowed Lewis to leave Wall Street and pursue writing full-time. The book has remained in print for decades and is frequently cited as essential reading for those seeking to understand the culture of American finance in the late twentieth century.

Transition to Full-Time Writing (1989–2002)

Following his departure from Salomon Brothers, Lewis established himself as a freelance writer and author. Throughout the 1990s, he wrote on a range of subjects, though finance and economics remained recurring themes. He contributed articles to a variety of publications, building a reputation for his ability to translate complex financial and economic topics into accessible and engaging narrative nonfiction.

During this period, Lewis published several books, expanding his subject matter beyond Wall Street. His writing style — characterized by vivid character portraits, narrative momentum, and an eye for the absurdities of institutional life — attracted a growing audience. He developed a method of structuring nonfiction around individual characters whose stories illuminated larger systemic themes, a technique that would become a hallmark of his most celebrated works.

Moneyball (2003)

In 2003, Lewis published Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, a book that would fundamentally alter public discourse about professional sports and data analytics. The book examined the Oakland Athletics of Major League Baseball and their general manager, Billy Beane, who used statistical analysis — specifically the principles of sabermetrics — to assemble a competitive team despite one of the lowest payrolls in the league.

Moneyball argued that traditional methods of scouting and evaluating baseball players were deeply flawed and that rigorous statistical analysis could identify undervalued players overlooked by conventional wisdom. The book became a bestseller and sparked widespread debate within the baseball community and beyond, influencing front-office strategies across professional sports leagues. The concept of "Moneyball" entered the popular lexicon as shorthand for the use of data-driven approaches to gain a competitive advantage in any field.

The book was adapted into a major motion picture in 2011, starring Brad Pitt as Billy Beane. Lewis was involved in discussions about the screenplay during the film's development.

The Blind Side (2006)

Lewis's 2006 book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game combined two narratives: a history of the evolution of the left tackle position in American football and the personal story of Michael Oher, a young man from a disadvantaged background in Memphis, Tennessee, who was adopted by a wealthy family and went on to play in the National Football League.

The book explored themes of race, class, and opportunity in the American South, while also providing a detailed analysis of how changes in football strategy — particularly the increasing importance of protecting a quarterback's blind side — elevated the left tackle position to one of the most valued in the sport. The Blind Side reached number one on The New York Times Best Seller list and won the 2007 Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

The Blind Side was Lewis's first book to be adapted into a film. The 2009 film of the same name, starring Sandra Bullock, was a commercial and critical success, earning Bullock the Academy Award for Best Actress.

The Big Short (2010)

In 2010, Lewis published The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, which examined the causes of the 2007–2008 financial crisis through the stories of several investors and analysts who foresaw the collapse of the subprime mortgage market and profited from it. The book focused on figures such as Steve Eisman, Michael Burry, and Greg Lippmann, portraying them as outsiders who recognized the fragility of the housing market and the financial instruments built upon it when mainstream institutions did not.

The Big Short became one of Lewis's most widely read works and solidified his position as a leading chronicler of American financial culture. The book was praised for making the highly technical subject of collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps comprehensible to a general audience.

The book was adapted into the 2015 film of the same name, directed by Adam McKay and starring Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, and Brad Pitt. The film won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Flash Boys and The Undoing Project (2014–2016)

Lewis continued his examination of financial markets with Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt (2014), which investigated the rise of high-frequency trading (HFT) in the U.S. stock market. The book centered on Brad Katsuyama, a trader at the Royal Bank of Canada, who discovered that high-frequency traders were using speed advantages to front-run orders from ordinary investors. Katsuyama went on to co-found IEX, a stock exchange designed to counteract these practices. Flash Boys sparked significant public debate about market fairness and prompted regulatory scrutiny of high-frequency trading practices.

In 2016, Lewis published The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds, which explored the intellectual partnership between Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. The book traced how their collaboration produced groundbreaking research in behavioral economics and cognitive psychology, particularly their work on heuristics and cognitive biases that challenged the assumption of human rationality in economic decision-making. Lewis has noted that the seed of The Undoing Project was planted by a review of Moneyball that pointed out the connection between Beane's approach and the work of Kahneman and Tversky.

The Fifth Risk, The Premonition, and Going Infinite (2018–2023)

Lewis published The Fifth Risk in 2018, examining the operations of the United States federal government — particularly the Department of Energy, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Commerce — and the consequences of political neglect and mismanagement of these agencies. The book argued that the mundane but essential functions of government were poorly understood and undervalued by the public and by political leadership alike.

In 2021, he published The Premonition: A Pandemic Story, which examined the response of various American public health officials and researchers to the COVID-19 pandemic. The book highlighted individuals who attempted to sound early warnings about the severity of the pandemic and the institutional failures that hampered an effective response.

Lewis's most recent book, Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon (2023), chronicles the meteoric rise and sudden collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Lewis had been embedded with Bankman-Fried for an extended period prior to FTX's implosion in November 2022, giving him unusual access to the subject. The book reached number one on The New York Times Best Seller list.

Journalism and Contributing Editor Roles

In addition to his book-length works, Lewis has maintained an active career in journalism. He became a contributing editor to Vanity Fair in 2009, writing long-form articles primarily on business, finance, and economics. His 2008 recruitment to the magazine was noted in media industry coverage.

His Vanity Fair work has included notable pieces such as "Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds" (2010), an examination of the Greek debt crisis that was among the earliest mainstream American accounts of the unfolding European sovereign debt crisis.

Lewis has also been a frequent public speaker and commentator on financial topics. In a December 2025 conversation with former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, Lewis discussed themes from his body of work, including the intersection of finance, government, and public life.

Personal Life

Lewis has been married twice. His first marriage was to Diane de Cordova; the couple married at Princeton in 1985. He later married Tabitha Soren, a former MTV News correspondent. Lewis has resided in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Lewis has maintained a connection to his hometown of New Orleans, and elements of Southern culture and geography recur in his work, particularly in The Blind Side.

Recognition

Lewis's books have received substantial critical and commercial recognition over the course of his career. He has won two Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, and several of his works have reached number one on The New York Times Best Seller list.

Three of his books — The Blind Side, Moneyball, and The Big Short — have been adapted into major Hollywood films, all of which achieved commercial success and received Academy Award nominations. The Blind Side (2009) earned Sandra Bullock the Academy Award for Best Actress, while The Big Short (2015) won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Lewis has been recognized as one of the most influential nonfiction writers in the United States. His work has been credited with shaping public understanding of complex financial instruments, the application of data analytics in sports, and the functioning of federal government agencies. Moneyball in particular had a measurable impact on the management practices of professional sports teams, and the term "Moneyball" has been widely adopted across industries to describe data-driven decision-making.

His work has also attracted scrutiny and debate. Flash Boys prompted responses from high-frequency trading firms and financial regulators, while Going Infinite generated discussion about the ethics and responsibilities of embedded journalism given the timing of FTX's collapse.

Lewis has been a featured speaker at business conferences, literary festivals, and academic institutions. Biographical profiles of Lewis have appeared in Encyclopædia Britannica, the BBC, and numerous other publications.

Legacy

Michael Lewis's body of work, spanning more than three decades, has established him as one of the foremost practitioners of narrative nonfiction in the United States. His books have collectively sold millions of copies and have been translated into numerous languages.

Lewis's distinctive approach — using the stories of individual characters to illuminate systemic issues in finance, sports, government, and science — has influenced a generation of nonfiction writers and journalists. His ability to render technical subjects accessible without sacrificing complexity has been noted by critics and peers alike. The success of film adaptations based on his books has further extended the reach of his ideas to audiences who might not otherwise engage with the underlying subject matter.

Liar's Poker remains a touchstone for writing about Wall Street culture, while The Big Short is frequently cited in discussions of the 2008 financial crisis. Moneyball transformed public understanding of how data analytics could be applied to competitive environments, a concept that has since spread well beyond baseball into business strategy, public policy, and other domains.

His later works, including The Fifth Risk and The Premonition, expanded his scope to examine the functioning and dysfunction of government institutions, contributing to public discourse about the role of expertise and institutional capacity in democratic governance.

Lewis continues to write and speak publicly on topics related to finance, technology, and American public life.

Selected Bibliography

• Liar's Poker (1989)
• The New New Thing (1999)
• Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (2003)
• The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game (2006)
• The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (2010)
• Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World (2011)
• Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt (2014)
• The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds (2016)
• The Fifth Risk (2018)
• The Premonition: A Pandemic Story (2021)
• Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon (2023)