Showing results by author "Michael Lewis" in All Categories

The government is a vast, complex system that Americans pay for, rebel against, rely upon, dismiss, and celebrate. It’s also our shared resource for addressing the biggest problems of society. And it’s made up of people, mostly unrecognized and uncelebrated, doing work that can be deeply consequential and beneficial to everyone. Michael Lewis invited his favorite writers, including Casey Cep, Dave Eggers, John Lanchester, Geraldine Brooks, Sarah Vowell, and W. Kamau Bell, to join him in finding someone doing an interesting job for the government and writing about them.

When Michael Lewis first met him, Sam Bankman-Fried was the world’s youngest billionaire and crypto’s Gatsby. CEOs, celebrities, and leaders of small countries all vied for his time and cash after he catapulted, practically overnight, onto the Forbes billionaire list. Who was this rumpled guy in cargo shorts and limp white socks, whose eyes twitched across Zoom meetings as he played video games on the side?

In 1986, before Michael Lewis became the best-selling author of The Big Short, Moneyball, and Flash Boys, he landed a job at Salomon Brothers, one of Wall Street’s premier investment firms. During the next three years, Lewis rose from callow trainee to New York- and London-based bond salesman, raking in millions for the firm and cashing in on a modern-day gold rush. Liar’s Poker is the culmination of those heady, frenzied years - a behind-the-scenes look at a unique and turbulent time in American business.

Moneyball reveals a quest for something as elusive as the Holy Grail, something that money apparently can't buy: the secret of success in baseball. The logical places to look would be the giant offices of major league teams and the dugouts. But the real jackpot is a cache of numbers collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors.

In this audio investigation - unavailable in book form - Lewis narrates his 2018 report from Washington originally published in Bloomberg View. From inside the White House press room - which Lewis describes as having "the cramped, uncared-for feel of a public toilet" - to a balcony overlooking "a sea of white people" in the Trump International Hotel, to Steve Bannon's Capitol Hill townhouse, where he joins the former campaign CEO to watch the State of the Union address, Lewis takes listeners on an unforgettable behind-the-scenes tour.

What happens when the President of the United States governs one Tweet at a time? When the elected leader of the free world may not have a firm grasp on the names of government agencies, much less an understanding of their intricate inner-workings? In the days following the 2016 inauguration, government personnel searched for answers that didn’t exist, while White House staff scoured halls for employees who would never be appointed.

Tornadoes, cyclones, tsunamis… Weather can be deadly – especially when it strikes without warning. Millions of Americans could soon find themselves at the mercy of violent weather if the public data behind lifesaving storm alerts gets privatized for personal gain. In his first Audible Original feature, New York Times best-selling author and journalist Michael Lewis delivers hard-hitting research on not-so-random weather data – and how Washington plans to release it.

La excepcional crónica del crac inmobiliario que originó la mayor crisis de los últimos 80 años. Cuando en otoño de 2008 la economía estadounidense se hundió, arrastrando tras de sí a buena parte del mundo desarrollado a una crisis de la que aún no hemos salido, a un grupo de personas no le sorprendió en absoluto.

In Trickster Makes This World, Lewis Hyde brings to life the playful and disruptive side of human imagination as it is embodied in trickster mythology. He first visits the old stories—Hermes in Greece, Eshu in West Africa, Krishna in India, Coyote in North America, among others—and then holds them up against the lives and work of more recent creators: Picasso, Duchamp, Ginsberg, John Cage, and Frederick Douglass. Twelve years after its first publication, Trickster Makes This World has taken its place among the great works of modern cultural criticism.

When we first meet the young man at the center of this extraordinary and moving story, he is one of 13 children by a mother addicted to crack; he does not know his real name, his father, his birthday, or any of the things a child might learn in school. And he has no serious experience playing organized football.

All over America, families are investing blood, sweat, tears, and retirement savings in their children’s sports careers, all with the ultimate goal of…what exactly? A college scholarship? A professional contract? Simply the taste of victory? Through the lens of the highly competitive world of girls’ softball, Lewis reveals the youth sports industrial complex that has arisen to aggressively monetize after-school pastimes.

Forty years ago Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky wrote a series of breathtakingly original studies undoing our assumptions about the decision-making process. Their papers showed the ways in which the human mind erred systematically when forced to make judgments about uncertain situations. Their work created the field of behavioral economics, revolutionized Big Data studies, advanced evidence-based medicine, led to a new approach to government regulation, and made Michael Lewis' work possible.

For those who could read between the lines, the censored news out of China was terrifying. But the president insisted there was nothing to worry about. Fortunately, we are still a nation of skeptics. Fortunately, there are those among us who study pandemics and are willing to look unflinchingly at worst-case scenarios. Michael Lewis’ taut and brilliant nonfiction thriller pits a band of medical visionaries against the wall of ignorance that was the official response of the Trump administration to the outbreak of COVID-19.

A cursed mansion puts a curious house sitter’s free will to the ultimate test. An old polaroid camera holds a monster that yearns to be released. And two brothers encounter a demonic force in the caverns just beyond town. Enter a dreamscape of supernatural terror with Scare Street’s latest collection. This diabolical volume contains 15 terrifying tales of fear and horror. And each story pulls you deeper into the realm of perpetual night.

Sam Bankman-Fried wasn't just rich. Before he turned thirty he'd become the world's youngest billionaire, making a record fortune in the crypto frenzy. CEOs, celebrities and world leaders vied for his time. At one point he considered paying off the entire national debt of the Bahamas so he could take his business there. Then it all fell apart.

Stories by: Ramsey Campbell, Brian M Sammons, Glynn Owen Barrass, Lucy A. Snyder, E.A. Black, Chris Kelso, Andrew Coulthard, Stephen Mark Rainey, Kevin Lewis, Richard Alan Scott, Russell Smeaton, J. Edwin Buja, Made in DNA, David Agranoff, Pete Rawlik, Brian C. Short, Michael Housel, John Chadwick, David Voyles, Konstantine Paradias, Love Kölle, Edward Morris, Parry Milton, Phil Breach, Garrett Cook, Andrew Freudenberg, Sarah Walker. The twenty-seven writers whose works appear here mine the rich seams that Lovecraft’s original vision created. However, lest one imagine that this implies ...

The government is a vast, complex system that citizens pay for, rebel against, rely upon, dismiss, and celebrate. It’s also our shared resource for addressing the biggest problems of society. And it’s made up of people, mostly unrecognized and uncelebrated, doing work that can be deeply consequential and beneficial to everyone. Michael Lewis invited his favourite writers to find someone doing an interesting job for the government and write about them.

Journalist and bestselling author Michael Lewis’ podcast Against the Rules is dedicated to examining what's happened to fairness. It feels like there's less of it every day, and one of the “haves” of those who are better off includes access to coaching. But does having a coach help or hinder us?

Moneyball is a quest for something that money can't buy: the secret of success in baseball. The real jackpot is a cache of numbers collected by a brotherhood of baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, and physics professors. These numbers prove that the traditional measure of success for players and teams are fatally flawed. This information has been around for years, and nobody paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, General Manager of the Oakland A's.

The Go-Go Years is the harrowing and humorous story of the growth stocks of the 1960s and how their meteoric rise caused a multitude of small investors to thrive until the devastating market crashes in the 1970s. It was a time when greed drove the market and fast money was being made and lost as the "go-go" stocks surged and plunged. Included are the stories of such high-profile personalities as H. Ross Perot, who lost $450 million in one day.