A shrewd observer of politics, finance and the American scene, Michael Lewis combines
keen insight with his signature wit, making him one of today’s leading social commentators.
A renowned best-selling author, Lewis is also a regular contributor to The New York Times
Magazine, Vanity Fair, Slate and Bloomberg.

Lewis’ latest book Panic! The Story of Modern Financial Insanity (December 2008) chronicles
five of the most violent and costly upheavals in recent financial history, from the crash of ‘87
to the current sub-prime mortgage disaster. With his trademark humor and brilliant anecdotes,
Lewis explores the mood and market conditions leading up to each event, weaves contemporary
accounts of what people thought was happening, then analyzes what actually happened - and
what we should have learned.

Lewis first made a name for himself in 1989 with the chart-topping Liar’s Poker: Rising Through
the Wreckage of Wall Street, an inside look at his career as a bond trader that best-selling author
Tom Wolfe called “the funniest book on Wall Street I’ve ever read,” and earned Lewis the label
of “America’s poet laureate of capital” from The Los Angeles Times. Liar’s Poker spent 62 weeks
on The New York Times best-seller list and remains one of the signature books of the 1980s.

A native of New Orleans, Michael Lewis graduated from Princeton University with a degree in
art history and earned a master’s at The London School of Economics.

At the podium, Lewis examines the era that was just brought to a crashing halt by the subprime
and worldwide credit crisis. Starting with the years he chronicled in Liar’s Poker, he touches on
the major economic events of the last twenty years, exploring what this period was all about,
how it began and how it’s likely to end. He masterfully transforms complex issues into accessible
scenarios through clever and amusing observations and continues to call it as he sees it in
recounting Wall Street’s excesses.