New Releases by Michael Lewis

“Lewis shows again why he is the leading journalist of his generation.”—Kyle Smith, Forbes The tsunami of cheap credit that rolled across the planet between 2002 and 2008 was more than a simple financial phenomenon: it was temptation, offering entire societies the chance to reveal aspects of their characters they could not normally afford to indulge. Icelanders wanted to stop fishing and become investment bankers. The Greeks wanted to turn their country into a pinata stuffed with cash and allow as many citizens as possible to take a whack at it. The Germans wanted to be even more German; the Irish wanted to stop being Irish. Michael Lewis''s investigation of bubbles beyond our shores is so brilliantly, sadly hilarious that it leads the American reader to a comfortable complacency: oh, those foolish foreigners. But when he turns a merciless eye on California and Washington, DC, we see that the narrative is a trap baited with humor, and we understand the reckoning that awaits the greatest and greediest of debtor nations.

In 1989, Michael Lewis reported on the potential effects of an earthquake in Japan on world financial markets. His insights are once again timely, and they are presented here as a stand-alone essay with a new introduction: “Real Versus Imaginary Japanese Earthquakes.” In the late 1980s, Japanese scientists were trying to figure out the economic damage that would be caused if a catastrophic earthquake destroyed Tokyo. The answer was bleak, but not for Japan. Kaoru Oda, an economist who worked for Tokai Bank, speculated that the United States would end up paying the most. Why? Japan owned trillions of dollars’ worth of foreign liquid assets and investments. These assets, which the world depended on, would be sold, forcing countries into the precarious position of having to return large amounts of money they might not have. After the recent earthquake, Michael Lewis reexamined this hypothesis and came to a surprising conclusion. With his characteristic sense of humor and wit, Lewis, once again, explains the inner workings of a financial catastrophe. “How a Tokyo Earthquake Could Devastate Wall Street” appears in Michael Lewis’s book The Money Culture.

The #1 New York Times bestseller: "It is the work of our greatest financial journalist, at the top of his game. And it''s essential reading."—Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair The real story of the crash began in bizarre feeder markets where the sun doesn''t shine and the SEC doesn''t dare, or bother, to tread: the bond and real estate derivative markets where geeks invent impenetrable securities to profit from the misery of lower- and middle-class Americans who can''t pay their debts. The smart people who understood what was or might be happening were paralyzed by hope and fear; in any case, they weren''t talking. Michael Lewis creates a fresh, character-driven narrative brimming with indignation and dark humor, a fitting sequel to his #1 bestseller Liar''s Poker. Out of a handful of unlikely-really unlikely-heroes, Lewis fashions a story as compelling and unusual as any of his earlier bestsellers, proving yet again that he is the finest and funniest chronicler of our time.

Presents the author''s darkly humorous investigation of the effects of the 2008 financial bubble on other countries before taking aim at greedy debtors in California and Washington, D.C.

This book explores the question, "Does Science disprove God?" It is a question that flows from the work of Charles Darwin and evolution and it has become the question of our times. If you believe in evolution, believe that God did not specifically create the universe or human race, what about faith? Some of the most cherished theories in Science are just as wrong as belief in the Garden of Eden. What are the reasons for belief in God and human spiritually in the modern world? This book takes on the dogmas of both Science and Religion.

The New York Times bestseller: “Hilarious. No mushy tribute to the joys of fatherhood, Lewis’ book addresses the good, the bad, and the merely baffling about having kids.”—Boston Globe When Michael Lewis became a father, he decided to keep a written record of what actually happened immediately after the birth of each of his three children. This book is that record. But it is also something else: maybe the funniest, most unsparing account of ordinary daily household life ever recorded, from the point of view of the man inside. The remarkable thing about this story isn’t that Lewis is so unusual. It’s that he is so typical. The only wonder is that his wife has allowed him to publish it.

The time was the 1980s. The place was Wall Street. The game was called Liar’s Poker. Michael Lewis was fresh out of Princeton and the London School of Economics when he landed a job at Salomon Brothers, one of Wall Street’s premier investment firms. During the next three years, Lewis rose from callow trainee to bond salesman, raking in millions for the firm and cashing in on a modern-day gold rush. Liar’s Poker is the culmination of those heady, frenzied years—a behind-the-scenes look at a unique and turbulent time in American business. From the frat-boy camaraderie of the forty-first-floor trading room to the killer instinct that made ambitious young men gamble everything on a high-stakes game of bluffing and deception, here is Michael Lewis’s knowing and hilarious insider’s account of an unprecedented era of greed, gluttony, and outrageous fortune.

Story of Michael Oher, a rising gridiron star, who was rescued from the ghettos of Memphis and placed with a wealthy family to help develop his football skills.

Which Song is the Best and Why? Read it and see! Organized by rank, from 1 to 100, this illustrated celebration of the best songs by the boys who revolutionized rock-and-roll includes expert commentary, historical context, interview material, and lots of great sidebars (including "best" lists from some of today''s pop music powerhouses.) Like all "best of" lists, the book''s opinionated stance generates animated discussion. Here, There, and Everywhere is profusely illustrated with photos of the band at work and play, and all of the unforgettable album-cover art. Appendices include a complete song list, discography, videography, and bibliography, making it a one-stop source of Beatles facts and figures.

In football, as in life, the value we place on people changes with the rules of the games they play.

A Life Adrift, the memoir of balladeer-political activist Soeda Azembo (1872-1944), chronicles his life as one of Japan’s first modern mass entertainers and imparts an understanding of how ordinary people experienced and accommodated the tumult of life in prewar Japan. Azembo created enka songs sung by tenant farmers in rural hinterlands and factory hands in Tokyo and Osaka. Although his work is still largely unknown outside Japan, his poems and lyrics were so well known at his career’s peak that a single verse served as shorthand expressing popular attitudes about political corruption, sex scandals, spiralling prices, war, and love of motherland. As these categories attest, he embedded in his songs contemporary views on class conflict, gender relations, and racial attitudes toward international rivals. Ordinary people valued Azembo’s music because it was of them and for them. They also appreciated it for being distinctively modern and home-grown, qualities rare among the cultural innovations that flooded into Japan from the mid-nineteenth century. A Life Adrift stands out as the only memoir of its kind, one written first-hand by a leader in the world of enka singing.

Derrida and Lacan: Another Writing argues that Jacques Derrida''s philosophical understanding of language should be supplemented by Jacques Lacan''s psychoanalytic approach to the symbolic order. Lacan adopts a non-philosophical, genetic or developmental approach to the question of language and in doing so isolates a dimension that Derrida cannot properly envisage: the imaginary. Michael Lewis argues that the real must be understood not just in relation to the symbolic but also in relation to the imaginary. The existence of an alternative approach to the real that is other than language allows us to identify the idiosyncrasies of Derrida''s purely transcendental approach, an approach that addresses language in terms of its conditions of possibility. Lacan shows us that an attention to the genesis of the symbolic order of language and culture should lead us to understand this real other in a different way.This book relates transcendental thought to the insights of non-philosophical thought, and, more specifically, it proposes a way in which philosophy might relate to the insights of the human and natural sciences. By critically juxtaposing Derrida and Lacan, Derrida and Lacan: Another Writing attempts to systematise Slavoj Zizek''s presentation of a Lacanian alternative to Derridean deconstruction. This work should be of interest to all readers in continental thought and transcendental philosophy, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and literary studies.

''Everything, in retrospect, is obvious. But if everything were obvious, authors of histories of financial folly would be rich . . . '' From Black Monday to the Asian financial crisis, from the internet bubble to mortgage meltdown, our lives are rules by crazy cycles of euphoria and hysteria that manage to grip the world but are all-too-soon forgotten. In this unique collection of articles, Michael Lewis - ex-trader and bestselling chronicler of avarice and frenzy in the markets - casts a sceptical eye back over the most panicked-about panics of recent decades. He tells a story of boom and busts, deranged greed, outsized egos and over-inflated salaries, where the only thing that can ever be predicted is out constant inability to predict anything. Using contemporary account form commentators such as Joseph Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs and Paul Krugman, plus many of his own best writings, Lewis conveys the mood before each catastrophe, what it was like in the heat of the moment, how, afterwards, we tires to explain away the chaos - and then failed to learn from it before the whole process started all over again. Panic! Gives us a completely new insight into how markets really operate - and who really knows what they''re talking about.

The #1 New York Times Bestseller "Lewis has such a gift for storytelling…he writes as lucidly for sports fans as for those who read him for other reasons." —Janet Maslin, New York Times When we first meet him, Michael Oher is one of thirteen children by a mother addicted to crack; he does not know his real name, his father, his birthday, or how to read or write. He takes up football, and school, after a rich, white, Evangelical family plucks him from the streets. Then two great forces alter Oher: the family’s love and the evolution of professional football itself into a game where the quarterback must be protected at any cost. Our protagonist becomes the priceless package of size, speed, and agility necessary to guard the quarterback’s greatest vulnerability, his blind side.

A story with a big heart about a boy, a coach, the game of baseball, and the game of life. "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." There was a turning point in Michael Lewis''s life, in a baseball game when he was fourteen years old. The irascible and often terrifying Coach Fitz put the ball in his hand with the game on the line and managed to convey such confident trust in Lewis''s ability that the boy had no choice but to live up to it. "I didn''t have words for it then, but I do now: I am about to show the world, and myself, what I can do." The coach''s message was not simply about winning but about self-respect, sacrifice, courage, and endurance. In some ways, and now thirty years later, Lewis still finds himself trying to measure up to what Coach Fitz expected of him.

Michael Lewis’s instant classic may be “the most influential book on sports ever written” (People), but “you need know absolutely nothing about baseball to appreciate the wit, snap, economy and incisiveness of [Lewis’s] thoughts about it” (Janet Maslin, New York Times). One of GQ''s 50 Best Books of Literary Journalism of the 21st Century Just before the 2002 season opens, the Oakland Athletics must relinquish its three most prominent (and expensive) players and is written off by just about everyone—but then comes roaring back to challenge the American League record for consecutive wins. How did one of the poorest teams in baseball win so many games? In a quest to discover the answer, Michael Lewis delivers not only “the single most influential baseball book ever” (Rob Neyer, Slate) but also what “may be the best book ever written on business” (Weekly Standard). Lewis first looks to all the logical places—the front offices of major league teams, the coaches, the minds of brilliant players—but discovers the real jackpot is a cache of numbers?numbers!?collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors. What these numbers prove is that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally flawed. Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base-on-balls. This information had been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics. He paid attention to those numbers?with the second-lowest payroll in baseball at his disposal he had to?to conduct an astonishing experiment in finding and fielding a team that nobody else wanted. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win . . . how can we not cheer for David?

Organized by ranking order from Number 1 to Number 100, this illustrated celebration of the best songs by the boys who revolutionized rock-and-roll includes expert commentary, historical context, interview material, and lots of great sidebars (including "best" lists from some of today''s pop music powerhouses). The authors are pop culture experts and lifelong Beatles aficionados whose enlightening commentary sheds new light on the subject. The book is profusely illustrated with great photos of the band at work and play, and all of the memorable album cover art that has come to represent a generation. Appendices include a complete song list, discography, videography, and bibliography, making it a one-stop source of Beatles facts and figures.

Featuring over 900 entries, this resource covers all disciplines within the social sciences with both concise definitions & in-depth essays.

The New York Times bestseller. "His book is a wake-up call at a time when many believe the net was a flash in the pan."—BusinessWeek With his knowing eye and wicked pen, Michael Lewis reveals how the Internet boom has encouraged changes in the way we live, work, and think. In the midst of one of the greatest status revolutions in the history of the world, the Internet has become a weapon in the hands of revolutionaries. Old priesthoods are crumbling. In the new order, the amateur is king: fourteen-year-olds manipulate the stock market and nineteen-year-olds take down the music industry. Unseen forces undermine all forms of collectivism, from the family to the mass market: one black box has the power to end television as we know it, and another one may dictate significant changes in our practice of democracy. With a new afterword by the author.

This primer for social work students introduces the general definitions and concepts of economics and uses case studies in social work to develop applied knowledge. The case studies include stories of job training, substance abuse centers, counseling, therapy, child protective services, and services for the poor. The concluding chapters are devoted to topics directly related to social work: economics of poverty, health economics, household economics, the economics of labor, and government failure.

This new book provides a comprehensive and refreshing insight into the more advanced topic of operations strategy. It builds on concepts from strategic management, operations management, marketing, and human resources. A three-part organization covers the nature, content, and process of operations strategy. For practicing managers.

Focusing on the marginal region of Toyama, on the Sea of Japan, the author explores the interplay of central and regional authorities, local and national perceptions of rights, and the emerging political practices in Toyama and Tokyo that became part of the new political culture that took shape in Japan following the Meiji Restoration.

New York Times Bestseller. “A superb book. . . . [Lewis] makes Silicon Valley as thrilling and intelligible as he made Wall Street in his best-selling Liar’s Poker.”—Time In the weird glow of the dying millennium, Michael Lewis set out on a safari through Silicon Valley to find the world’s most important technology entrepreneur. He found this in Jim Clark, a man whose achievements include the founding of three separate billion-dollar companies. Lewis also found much more, and the result—the best-selling book The New New Thing—is an ingeniously conceived history of the Internet revolution.

Few people question the pervasive belief that early childhood exerts an inordinate power over adult achievements, relationships, and mental health. Once robbed of our potential by the inadequacies of our upbringing, the theory goes, we risk being trapped in maladaptive patterns and unfulfilling lives. But does early experience really seal our fate? Daring to challenge prevailing models of child development, this provocative book argues that what enables us to survive--and sets us free from our pasts--is our astonishing adaptability to change, shaped by the uniquely human attributes of consciousness, will, and desire.

A great deal of mathematical knowledge is required of golf course management. From budgeting estimates to ordering topdressing, to irrigation volume and coverage, to many other parts of golf course operation, a thorough understanding of basic mathematical principles and the ability to relate those principles to real-world situations is an absolute must.

Shame, the quintessential human emotion, received little attention during the years in which the central forces believed to be motivating us were identified as primitive instincts like sex and aggression. Now, redressing the balance, there is an explosion of interest in the self-conscious emotion. Much of our psychic lives involve the negotiation of shame, asserts Michael Lewis, internationally known developmental and clinical psychologist. Shame is normal, not pathological, though opposite reactions to shame underlie many conflicts among individuals and groups, and some styles of handling shame are clearly maladaptive. Illustrating his argument with examples from everyday life, Lewis draws on his own pathbreaking studies and the theory and research of many others to construct the first comprehensive and empirically based account of emotional development focused on shame. In this paperback edition, Michael Lewis adds a compelling new chapter on stigma in which he details the process in which stigmatization produces shame.

This accessible introduction to data analysis focuses on the interpretation of statistical results, in particular those which come from nonexperimental social research. It will provide social science researchers with the tools necessary to select and evaluate statistical tests appropriate for their research question. Using a consistent data-set throughout the book to illustrate the various analytic techniques, Michael Lewis-Beck covers topics such as univariate statistics, measures of association, the statistical significance of the relationship between two variables, simple regression in which the dependent variable is influenced by a single independent variable, and multiple regression.