Writing and Then Forgetting the Pandemic Playbook
Author Michael Lewis chronicles how the government’s Covid-19 response went awry in his latest book.
What happens when the federal government’s transition goes awry and a highly contagious, lethal pandemic arises? Michael Lewis unfurls the narrative in his latest book, “The Premonition: A Pandemic Story.” The author of “The Undoing Project,” “Moneyball,” “The Big Short” and many other books explains, as the latest guest on the Masters in Business podcast, how the U.S. was the best-prepared nation in the world for a pandemic, yet allowed a variety of its institutions to fail.
Deploying the approach that has made all his books so readable, Lewis tells the story through quirky and fascinating characters: Charity Dean, the head of Public Health for Santa Barbara (and later, California); Carter Mescher, the Bush administration alum who created the pandemic response playbook; Joe Derisi, the MacArthur Fellow who heads the CZ Biohub research lab.