I haven’t read Going Infinite, the new Michael Lewis book on Sam Bankman-Fried and the collapse of FTX. I’ve enjoyed some of his past work. Clearly there have been some major questions raised about previous stories, and I do wonder about the speed at which these semi-biographical tomes are being turned out across the industry: for example Lewis’s pandemic book, The Premonition, came out in May 2021… which feels a little early to be declaring much of anything.

Maybe it’s some shift in the balance of the industry in recent years, from longform magazine investigations and profiles and towards Big Airport Books? Or perhaps when you write best-selling books, every story looks and feels like it needs to be a best-selling book? I don’t know, but I can say from experience that the pressure of real-time reporting on big topics is exceedingly heavy.

But probably the most arresting thing I’ve seen about Going Infinite was the subheading on this New Republic review.

“The CEO of FTX was the worst possible subject for a biographer of real but limited talent: He was boring.”

Twenty words of utter devastation.