20 Great Articles by Michael Lewis
20 amazing articles by one of the world's top journalists
On the Financial Crisis
The era that defined Wall Street is finally, officially over. What went wrong?
How one man (almost) single-handedly destroyed the world's biggest insurance
company.
How one investor spotted the huge bubble in the subprime-mortgage bond market,
in 2004, and created a way to bet against it.
What led a tiny fishing nation, population 300,000, to decide, around 2003, to
re-invent itself as a global financial power?
How Greece ran up a $1.2 trillion debt (roughly a quarter-million dollars for
each working adult).
Thew Irish boom, bust and how the country's government and banks conspired to
screw its people.
On Sport
For the past four years, working with one of the lowest payrolls in the game,
the Oakland A’s have won as many regular-season games as almost any other team.
How on earth did they do it?
Every other high-school football player in America was dying for Lemming to
invite him to play in the U.S. Army All-American Bowl. Michael Oher had left
his invitation on the table…
His greatness is not marked in box scores or at slam-dunk contests, but on the
court Shane Battier makes his team better, often much better, and his opponents
worse, often much worse.
Misc.
"I can still remember when time was too abundant to seem valuable."
Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky and the built-in kinks in human reasoning.
McCain wanted to change the way politicians paid for their campaigns. Private
money, he said, was corrupting public life.
What do they teach at the Columbia Journalism School?
On Youth
On Sept. 20, 2000, the SEC settled its case against a 15-year-old high-school
student named Jonathan Lebed, the first minor ever to face proceedings for
stock-market fraud.
In a fast changing economy, children enjoy one big advantage over adults: they
haven’t decided who they are.
There are teachers with a rare ability to enter a child’s mind; it’s as if
their ability to get there at all gives them the right to stay forever.
On Economics
A classic late 80s piece about what the economic fallout would be if a 7.9-
magnitude earthquake struck Tokyo.
How Long-Term Capital Management fell apart.
Books
An insiders guide to the bizare rituals of Wall St. and the crash of '87
The financial crisis through the eyes of the people who saw it coming
A book-length version of the classic essay The Trading Desk (see above) tells
the story of the people behind baseball's statistical revolution.
Another classic that became a film, Lewis fleshes out his great essay The
Ballad of Big Mike (see above) with an incisive analysis of the role of
football's unsung heros.
