Billy Beane still hasn't been to a World Series let alone won one. Michael Oher was illegally recruited by an Ole Miss booster who skirted NCAA rules by adopting him.
Michael Lewis is Malcolm Gladwell with normal hair. He does seem like a solid guy who really knows what he's talking about. That's how he sells books.
That's strange logic. Whatever happened or not with Billy Beane, he's absolutely right about the HFT-bank-broker strategies that he singles out in his book. Most of the critics of the book seem to not have read it, sadly..
I suppose my comment was silly and snarky. Clearly Michael Lewis is a gifted writer. But he's not a journalist, and he takes sides. He uses his enormous talent to demonize some and lionize others, when often the facts of the case could easily be viewed from another perspective. The problem isn't simply that Lewis's critics don't have the facts on their side; it's that they lack his eloquence and his podium.
To that end, referring to The Blind Side, the fact that Lewis was a schoolmate of Tuohy at an elite prep school in New Orleans, and the NCAA did investigate the Tuohy-Oher relationship, its not beyond the realm of possibility that Tuohy got away with something in adopting Oher.
As to Billy Beane, thanks to Michael Lewis he's touted as a visionary who literally changed the game of baseball, except the teams he put together have never been to the World Series, and over his GM career, the A's are slightly over .500. It's possible that he's not so revolutionary.
This is not to say the Lewis gets his facts wrong. He doesn't by and large. But non-fiction is like photography in that it is not a clinical representation, and the same event from different perspectives can be understood very differently.
Michael Lewis is Malcolm Gladwell with normal hair. He does seem like a solid guy who really knows what he's talking about. That's how he sells books.