Michael Lewis's global bestselling books lift the lid on the biggest stories of our times. They include Flash Boys, a game-changing expose of high-speed scamming; The Big Short, which was made into a hit Oscar-winning film; Liar's Poker, the book that defined the excesses of the 1980s; and, most recently, The Fifth Risk, revealing what happens when democracy unravels. Michael Lewis was born in New Orleans and educated at Princeton University and the London School of Economics.
Going Infinite is insanely readable and I devoured it, marvelling
at Lewis’s ability to pace, structure and humanise a story about
something as dense and unfriendly as crypto… As with previous
outings such as Moneyball (nerdy baseball stats), The Big Short
(credit default swaps), and Flash Boys (high-frequency trading),
Going Infinite shows off Lewis’s peculiar genius for making arcane
information as transporting as fantasy fiction.
*Guardian*
Going Infinite is a stupefyingly pleasurable book to read. It’s
perfectly paced, extremely funny, and fills in many gaps in a story
that has been subjected to an unholy amount of reporting... What he
began with Moneyball has come into full flower with Going Infinite.
Lewis has surveyed a landscape taken by convention as settled and
found it destabilized, at least here and there, by uneven and
unreliable information. Perhaps Lewis’s book should encourage an
update, however minuscule, in our own priors.
*New Yorker*
Going Infinite is a portrait of grandiose ambitions, youthful
arrogance, and the distorting power of money... [Lewis] remains the
greatest living exponent of the plain style in reporting. His eye
for detail is unsurpassed... And as a chronicle of collective
delusion - a modern version of the Dutch tulip mania - Going
Infinite is an instant classic... Michael Lewis deserves huge
credit for capturing [SBF] in all his infinite weirdness... Mark
Zuckerberg, another boy genius in ratty shoes, once described
Twitter as a clown car that fell into a gold mine. Sam
Bankman-Fried was a Seth Rogen character who fell into a tulip
field circa 1634. Another one will be along in a minute. We never
learn.
*The Atlantic*
Going Infinite is in many ways Lewis at his best. He marshals a
complex global story without losing sight of the delightful and
revealing human details. He is a world-class noticer … Lewis is a
generous writer with a humane intelligence, and it is to his credit
that he doesn’t reach for easy cynicism or cheap effects.
*TLS*
Lewis’ storytelling is as good as ever… In the past, Mr Lewis has
focused on little-known people doing extraordinary things. This
time his subject is notorious… Mr Bankman-Fried’s hyper-rationality
sets him apart from everyone. He views people not as good or bad,
but as “probability distributions” around a mean… By tolerating the
idea that hyper-rationalists cannot make sense of the rules of the
game the way most people do, Mr Lewis implicitly asks readers to
reconsider whatever they thought they knew about Mr Bankman-Fried.
In the court of public opinion, he is already convicted. That’s
reason enough to give this book a read.
*The Economist*
Going Infinite is wildly entertaining, surprising multiple times on
pretty much every page, but it adds up to a sad story, even a
tragedy, for its central character and for all the people who lost
so much thanks to his actions… Lewis tries to answer the first
question he was asked about Bankman-Fried: who was this guy? The
question of his guilt or innocence Lewis leaves to the criminal
justice system. I think that’s good practice, given that the trial
is happening right now. For what it’s worth, I see no contradiction
between the person described in Going Infinite and the things SBF
is accused of having done. In fact I think the book makes it easier
to understand how and why he did what he allegedly did.
*London Review of Books*
Michael Lewis has an uncanny instinct for a big story, and is now
right in the thick of the action again... Reading Lewis can feel
like being a passenger in an expertly piloted bobsleigh. You’re
moving so fast down the mountain, but you know you’re going to be
delivered safe and sound – hot chocolate waiting at the bottom.
There is no need to stress, only to thrill to the scenery as it
hurtles past.
*New Statesman*
In November 2022, FTX collapsed in a matter of days after it
suffered billions of dollars in customer withdrawals, sending
shockwaves through the crypto world. To make sense of all this,
with perfect timing, comes Michael Lewis… Going Infinite is his
superbly detailed picture of the man behind it... So where might
the money have gone? We still don’t entirely know, though Lewis
offers some preliminary balance sheet calculations — which remain
more detailed than anything FTX ever published.
*Evening Standard*
Michael Lewis is the world’s finest financial storyteller… Going
Infinite is at its best in describing Bankman-Fried’s rise… Lewis
is equally sharp on how the effective altruism movement shifted its
priorities, from donating to prevent disease and mortality in the
global south to worrying about (putative) trillions of human lives
across the galaxy in the distant future.
*Daily Telegraph*
When the stories of our times are told, there will be no more
seminal documents than the books of Michael Lewis.
*Guardian*
I would read an 800-page history of the stapler if he wrote it.
*New York Times Book Review*
In the hands of Michael Lewis, anything is possible.
*Sunday Times*
He is so good everyone else may as well pack up.
*Evening Standard*
Life is what happens between Michael Lewis books.
*Michael Hofmann*
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