Writing Lewis described his experiences at Salomon and the evolution of the
mortgage-backed bond in ''
Liar's Poker (1989). In The New New Thing (1999), he investigated the then-booming Silicon Valley and the obsession with innovation. Four years later, Lewis wrote Moneyball'' (2003), in which he investigated the success of
Billy Beane and the
Oakland Athletics. In August 2007, he wrote an article about
catastrophe bonds, "In Nature's Casino", that ran in
The New York Times Magazine. Lewis has worked for
The Spectator, and a visiting fellow at the
University of California, Berkeley. He wrote the
Dad Again column for
Slate. Lewis worked for
Conde Nast Portfolio, but in February 2009 left to join
Vanity Fair, where he became a contributing editor. In September 2011, after the successful release of the
film adaptation of
Moneyball, it was reported that Lewis planned to take on "a much more active role in the what could be the next film based on one of his books" and would start writing a script for a ''Liar's Poker'' film. During 2013 in
Vanity Fair, Lewis wrote on the injustice of the prosecution of ex-
Goldman Sachs programmer
Sergey Aleynikov, who is given an entire chapter in
Flash Boys.
Flash Boys, which looked at
high-frequency trading of Wall Street and other markets, was released in March 2014. Lewis's 2015
Vanity Fair article "How Tom Wolfe Became ... Tom Wolfe", about the journalist and writer
Tom Wolfe, became the basis for the documentary film
Radical Wolfe, directed by Richard Dewey and released in 2023. In 2016, Lewis published
The Undoing Project, chronicling the close academic collaboration and personal relationship between Israeli psychologists
Amos Tversky and
Daniel Kahneman. The duo found systemic errors in human judgment under uncertainty, with implications for models of decision-making in fields such as economics, medicine, and sports. In 2017, Lewis wrote a series of articles for
Vanity Fair in which he described the
Trump administration's approach to various federal agencies, including the
Department of Energy and the
Department of Agriculture. His articles described a sense of incredulity and disillusionment from career civil servants, particularly because of the Trump administration's lack of attention to some of their work, and the lack of care, knowledge, experience, and respect from Trump political appointees. That material was incorporated into Lewis's book
The Fifth Risk, which was on the
New York Times nonfiction best-seller list for 14 weeks, and described the disconnect between the Obama administration's well-prepared transition plans and the incoming Trump administration's apparent lack of concern. Along with Energy and Agriculture, this book added
Commerce among the main departments described. In 2018, Lewis wrote and narrated
The Coming Storm for
Audible Studios, which released the short nonfiction story as part of its new Audible Originals series of
audiobooks. In 2023, he wrote
Going Infinite, about
the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, its CEO,
Sam Bankman-Fried, and what came to be the
collapse of FTX.
Broadcasting and podcasts Lewis's podcast,
Against the Rules, first aired on April 2, 2019. The first season comprised seven episodes, each taking on a different aspect of society addressing the concept of fairness "in realms ranging from art authentication to consumer finance". The show often refers to the growing social distrust for authority, and refers to different types of public officials as "referees."
Against the Rules is produced by
Pushkin Industries, the media company founded by journalist
Malcolm Gladwell and former
Slate executive
Jacob Weisberg. On January 12, 2020, Lewis appeared as one of the castaways on
BBC Radio 4's
Desert Island Discs. ==Reception==