Michael Lewis

Born to a wealthy New Orleans family, Lewis attended the Isidore Newman School and went on to pursue an art history degree at Princeton. Following his graduation from Princeton, Lewis spent a year working in the offices of an art dealer for low wages before attending the London School of Economics. Invited by a relative to a dinner in honor of the Queen Mother, he charmed his way into a job offer at Salomon Brothers after being seated next to the wife of a managing director. Lewis was quickly disillusioned by the immaturity and boorishness of his coworkers and the lack of actual financial acumen or analysis involved in their work. From that disillusionment arose his first book, Liar's Poker (1989), a scathing look inside Wall Street, now considered a classic examination of the 1980s "greed is good" mindset.Lewis had married his first wife and college sweetheart Diane deCordova in 1985. After the marriage ended, he was briefly wed to former CNBC correspondent Kate Bohner before marrying his third wife, photographer and former MTV reporter Tabitha Soren. In the meantime, he followed his initial success with additional books dealing with the financial world as well as gigs writing for Bloomberg and the New York Times Magazine. It was 10 years, however, before another book approached the success of his first - The New New Thing (1999), which looked at Silicon Valley start-ups. Next: The Future Just Happened (2001) dealt with the great leveling effect of the Internet in areas ranging from the stock market to creative endeavors and spawned a four-part BBC series of the same name.Lewis then turned his focus from financial to sports writing, to even greater success. Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (2003) was not merely a best-seller; its assertions in favor of an analytical approach to winning baseball, known as sabermetrics, actually changed the way many teams and managers approached the sport. Lewis enjoyed equal success with his book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game (2006), about the game of football and a white evangelical Christian family who took in a talented, illiterate, black high school football player with a crack-addicted mother and nurtured his way into first college and then a professional career with the NFL. Both books were adapted for film, with "The Blind Side" (2009), starring Sandra Bullock, garnering an Oscar win for Bullock as Best Actress as well as a Best Picture nomination and a host of other awards and nominations including a Best Actress Golden Globe for Bullock and yet another Best Actress win from the Screen Actors' Guild. The movie was a financial success as well. The film adaptation "Moneyball" (2011), with Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill and Philip Seymour Hoffman, was also a critical and commercial success and was nominated for multiple awards including Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay.Lewis continues to be critical of the financial industry, and in 2011 wrote pieces and gave several interviews in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement. He has also appeared on multiple episodes of "The Daily Show" (Comedy Central, 1996-), "The Colbert Report" (Comedy Central, 2005-) and "Charlie Rose" (PBS, 1991-), among others, discussing his books and the financial world. Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World (2011) blended travel writing with financial analysis, examining the effects of bubbles on places at home and abroad, and he caused yet another stir with a 2012 Vanity Fair portrait of President Obama for which he spent six months shadowing the president at home and on his travels. Lewis remained closer to home for a book about the experience of three-time fatherhood, Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood (2013).