Roger Lowenstein – Author Biography
Early Life
Roger Lowenstein grew up in the United States and studied at Cornell University. He joined the Wall Street Journal, where he spent more than a decade as a financial journalist, covering Wall Street during some of its most dramatic years.
Career
Lowenstein left daily journalism to write books — and became one of the finest narrative historians of American finance. Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist (1995) was the first major biography of Warren Buffett, written with Buffett’s cooperation. When Genius Failed (2000) chronicled the spectacular collapse of the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management with novelistic intensity. He followed with Origins of the Crash (2004), While America Aged (2008), The End of Wall Street (2010), America’s Bank (2015) on the founding of the Federal Reserve, and Ways and Means (2022) on Lincoln and the financing of the Civil War.
Major Works
Lowenstein’s major books are Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist (1995), When Genius Failed (2000), Origins of the Crash (2004), The End of Wall Street (2010), America’s Bank (2015), and Ways and Means (2022).
Writing Style and Themes
Lowenstein writes financial history with a novelist’s eye for character and a reporter’s command of detail. His great themes are hubris and its consequences — the brilliant men of Long-Term Capital Management destroyed by their own models — the tension between speculation and stewardship, and the recurring patterns of American financial history. He is skeptical of financial engineering, sympathetic to prudence, and unmatched at making balance sheets dramatic. His Buffett biography remains essential reading on the investor.
Legacy
Roger Lowenstein is among the most respected financial journalists of his generation — the rare writer equally trusted by Wall Street insiders and general readers. When Genius Failed is considered the definitive account of the LTCM collapse and a cautionary classic. His body of work stands as a chronicle of modern American capitalism: its geniuses, its follies, and its endless cycles.
