The Best Finance Writer of Our Times

Many people find finance a dry subject. It is true that finance can be difficult to write about and describe. Finance doesn’t lend itself to dramatic scenes in the way that the medical or legal professions do.

It takes an exceptionally talented person to be able to craft a compelling finance story.

One such person is Michael Lewis. Lewis was a former investment banker who published his first book, Liar’s Poker, in 1989 about the development of the mortgage-backed debt security market in America. This story was engaging and impressive. What was even more impressive was that he would write many more engaging and captivating stories set in the financial markets or in some way related to numbers and finance.

He wrote about data analysis in baseball (Moneyball, 2003); the 2008 financial crisis (The Big Short, 2010 and Boomerang, 2011); high-frequency trading (Flash Boys, 2014); and behavioural finance (The Undoing Project, 2016).

He tells his stories through the eyes of the characters and players in the story, instead of focusing too much on the numbers and details. This is very difficult to do in finance, where data and calculations can contain the key to a story.

So if you find finance boring, try reading Michael Lewis.