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Michael Lewis (born October 15, 1960) is an American contemporary non-fiction author and financial journalist. His bestselling books include Liar’s Poker, The New New Thing, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game, Panic and Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood. He is currently a contributing editor to Vanity Fair.

Lewis was born in New Orleans to corporate lawyer J. Thomas Lewis and community activist Diana Monroe Lewis. He attended the private, nondenominational, co-educational college preparatory Isidore Newman School in New Orleans. Later, he attended Princeton University where he received a BA in art history in 1982 and was a member of the Ivy Club. He also received a masters degree in economics from the London School of Economics in 1985.

Lewis went on to work with New York art dealer Wildenstein, and then became a bond salesman at Salomon Brothers in London, an experience he described in his first book, Liar’s Poker (1989). While at Salomon Brothers, he continued to work nights and weekends as a journalist, an effort he continues to this day with pieces for periodicals like The New York Times Magazine.

In the The New New Thing (1999) he investigated the then-booming Silicon Valley technological scene, and discussed obsession with innovation. He considered this phenomenon both from the perspective of the computer engineers actually making the new products, and the entrepreneurs who invested in them.

Four years later, Lewis again entered the cultural mainstream with Moneyball, in which he investigated the dramatic success of Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s, a baseball team which won consistently despite not being particularly well-funded by Major League Baseball standards. He noted the influence of baseball thinkers such as Bill James on the Oakland front office, which used their arguments to find underrated baseball players. In contrast to other teams which still considered potential players almost entirely on their physical abilities, such as speed and strength, Beane considered prior performance at the college and minor league level. This allowed him to find players whose physical skills might have been ordinary, but were still able to play extraordinarily well on the field. James also argued that certain skills, such as the ability to get on base, were equally valuable as the ability to hit, though most baseball decision makers considered the latter to be of more importance. Beane was thus able to find players who were able to provide high value for bargain prices. Lewis determined that these strategies, among others, allowed the relatively cash-poor A’s to often outperform much wealthier teams.

In August 2007 he wrote an article about catastrophe bonds that appeared in The New York Times Magazine, entitled “In Nature’s Casino.”

Lewis has worked for the New York Times Magazine, as a columnist for Bloomberg, and a visiting fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. He wrote the Dad Again column for Slate. Lewis was one of the high-profile hires to Conde Nast Portfolio but in February of 2009 he left Portfolio to join Vanity Fair, where he became a contributing editor.

Lewis married Diane de Cordova Lewis, his girlfriend prior to his Salomon days. After several years, he was briefly married to former CNBC correspondent Kate Bohner, before marrying the former MTV reporter Tabitha Soren on October 4, 1997. Lewis lives with Tabitha, 2 daughters, and one son (Quinn, Dixie, and Walker) in Berkeley, California.

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

The Big Short tells a story of spectacular, epic folly.

It has taken the world’s greatest financial meltdown to bring Michael Lewis back to the subject that made him famous. His international bestseller Liar’s Poker exposed the greed and carnage of the City and Wall Street in the 1980s; he wrote it as a cautionary tale, but people seem to have read it as a how-to guide. Now, he wants to settle accounts.

In this visceral tour to the heart of the financial system, Michael Lewis takes us around the globe and back decades to trace the origins of the current crisis. He meets the people who saw it coming, the people who were asleep at the wheel and the people who were actively driving us all of a cliff. How could we have all been so deluded for quite so long? Where did it all start? Was it systemic? Was it avoidable? And who the hell can we blame? Michael Lewis has the answers.

No one is better qualified to get to the heart of this labyrinthine story. And no one can make it such an enjoyable ride along the way.

Popular Books by Michael Lewis

• Coach: Lessons on the Game of Life
• Liar’s Poker: The Book that Revealed the Truth about London and Wall Street
• The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game