What do you think?
Rate this book
Losers
Losers is a wickedly funny, unflinching look at how America really goes about choosing a President.
"A fresh, hilarious must read... [Losers] is a winner."- Time
Michael Lewis is a master at dissecting the after skewering Wall Street in his national bestseller Liar's Poker, he packed his mighty pen and set out on the 1996 campaign trail. As he follows the men who aspire to the Oval Office, Lewis discovers an absurd mix of bravery and backpedaling, heroic possibility and mealy-mouthed sound bytes, and a process so ridiculous and unsavory that it leaves him wondering if everyone involved—from the journalists to the candidates to the people who voted—isn't ultimately a loser.
The
Pat becomes the first politician ever to choose a black hat over a white one.
Phil spends twenty million dollars to convince voters of his fiscal responsibility.
John makes the fatal mistake of actually speaking his mind.
Alan checks out of a New Hampshire hotel and tells the manager another candidate will be paying his bill.
Steve refuses to answer questions about his father's motorcycles.
Bob marches through the campaign without ever seeming to care.
"A fresh, hilarious must read... [Losers] is a winner."- Time
Michael Lewis is a master at dissecting the after skewering Wall Street in his national bestseller Liar's Poker, he packed his mighty pen and set out on the 1996 campaign trail. As he follows the men who aspire to the Oval Office, Lewis discovers an absurd mix of bravery and backpedaling, heroic possibility and mealy-mouthed sound bytes, and a process so ridiculous and unsavory that it leaves him wondering if everyone involved—from the journalists to the candidates to the people who voted—isn't ultimately a loser.
The
Pat becomes the first politician ever to choose a black hat over a white one.
Phil spends twenty million dollars to convince voters of his fiscal responsibility.
John makes the fatal mistake of actually speaking his mind.
Alan checks out of a New Hampshire hotel and tells the manager another candidate will be paying his bill.
Steve refuses to answer questions about his father's motorcycles.
Bob marches through the campaign without ever seeming to care.
326 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 27, 1997
202 people are currently reading
1965 people want to read
About the author
Michael Lewis
42 books15.2k followersMichael Monroe Lewis is an American author and financial journalist. He has also been a contributing editor to Vanity Fair since 2009, writing mostly on business, finance, and economics. He is known for his nonfiction work, particularly his coverage of financial crises and behavioral finance.
Lewis was born in New Orleans and attended Princeton University, from which he graduated with a degree in art history. After attending the London School of Economics, he began a career on Wall Street during the 1980s as a bond salesman at Salomon Brothers. The experience prompted him to write his first book, Liar's Poker (1989). Fourteen years later, Lewis wrote Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (2003), in which he investigated the success of Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics. His 2006 book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game was his first to be adapted into a film, The Blind Side (2009). In 2010, he released The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. The film adaptation of Moneyball was released in 2011, followed by The Big Short in 2015.
Lewis's books have won two Los Angeles Times Book Prizes and several have reached number one on the New York Times Bestsellers Lists, including his most recent book, Going Infinite (2023).
Lewis was born in New Orleans and attended Princeton University, from which he graduated with a degree in art history. After attending the London School of Economics, he began a career on Wall Street during the 1980s as a bond salesman at Salomon Brothers. The experience prompted him to write his first book, Liar's Poker (1989). Fourteen years later, Lewis wrote Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (2003), in which he investigated the success of Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics. His 2006 book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game was his first to be adapted into a film, The Blind Side (2009). In 2010, he released The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. The film adaptation of Moneyball was released in 2011, followed by The Big Short in 2015.
Lewis's books have won two Los Angeles Times Book Prizes and several have reached number one on the New York Times Bestsellers Lists, including his most recent book, Going Infinite (2023).
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 79 reviews
May 15, 2011
THIS is why I’m a Michael Lewis fan. The book follows the 1996 presidential campaign trail from an unusual slant; although assigned to cover the campaign, Lewis constantly finds that there’s nothing interesting going on with the frontrunners, so he spends time getting to know the candidates who have no chance of winning. I left more highlights and notes in this book than in any other that I’ve read on the Kindle. Losers blends top-notch writing, a strange slant on political insight, and . All along, Lewis can’t help but befriend each candidate, so the book moves you into their worlds in unexpected ways. The catch, of course, that as soon as a political writer becomes sympathetic to a politician, his views on the politician are no longer relevant. It’s this cycle that pushes Lewis from candidate to candidate over the course of the campaign. Fun and insightful stuff about politicians, campaigns, and political writing.
Reading this book fourteen years after it was published adds to it as well; the John McCain of the 1996 campaign trail seems a politician cast from a different mold. Fast forward to the John McCain seen through the lens of the 2008 presidential campaign and you see the observations of Losers in full force. Mix enough desire to win the presidency into any campaign, and the politician moves to the bland, predictable, and in McCain’s case a blurring or disavowal of his own convictions (as in Dole’s 1996 muddying of his own work on the NAFTA treaty).
Reading this book fourteen years after it was published adds to it as well; the John McCain of the 1996 campaign trail seems a politician cast from a different mold. Fast forward to the John McCain seen through the lens of the 2008 presidential campaign and you see the observations of Losers in full force. Mix enough desire to win the presidency into any campaign, and the politician moves to the bland, predictable, and in McCain’s case a blurring or disavowal of his own convictions (as in Dole’s 1996 muddying of his own work on the NAFTA treaty).
February 10, 2020
Serendipitously found this book in my mother's house recently. 100% enjoyed, possibly due to my current hyper-focus on a terrible primary process / election year.
Trail Fever suggested that politics was reinvented at the end of the last century, but politicians like Bob Dole or Lamar Alexander or Phil Gramm didn't know what to do about it (to be fair, neither did non-politicians like Morry Taylor and Alan Keyes). It took a few decades for someone as perfectly empty as Trump to come along and take advantage. In fairness, Pat Buchanan was a pretty close proto-Trump: he says he will bring back steel. He argues that the founding fathers were protectionist, not because he believes that, but because -- as he openly admits to the author -- draping the founding fathers over an idea is a way to sell it to the American people. He actually had a press event at the US/Mexico border and called for a fence from San Diego to Florida (sic). In the end, Buchanan probably just needed to be taller and richer, less eloquent and more brazen. Steve Forbes had the richer and taller part, but went too far in the emptiness column. Here was someone completely lacking in character and accomplishment, someone who should not have been considered as treasurer of your book club, spending millions to get national press and spout off his terrible ideas that continue to influence the political conversation of the country to this day. Thank god we don't let that happen anymore.
As Lewis says, in one of his many great insights, "this emphasis on who wins is a form of madness." You can't make any money predicting winners, and "the winner in this case has had no effect whatsoever on the debate. The debate has been framed entirely by the losers."
Random tangent: midway through the book, Lewis relates an unsettling exchange with a couple rogue Detroit union guys calling themselves "Citizens for Better Government":
ML: "How many people people are involved in this movement?"
"We don't discuss that. It's national."
ML: "Who is the head of it, nationally?"
"We don't discuss that."
ML: "What's the point of organizing, then?"
"We don't discuss that, either."
ML: "What about Perot?"
"The true grassroots people abandoned Ross Perot. It's the opportunists and the gullibles that stayed with him."
Knowing what we now know -- "economic anxiety" and all that -- this interview struck me as much more nefarious than Lewis realized.
Trail Fever suggested that politics was reinvented at the end of the last century, but politicians like Bob Dole or Lamar Alexander or Phil Gramm didn't know what to do about it (to be fair, neither did non-politicians like Morry Taylor and Alan Keyes). It took a few decades for someone as perfectly empty as Trump to come along and take advantage. In fairness, Pat Buchanan was a pretty close proto-Trump: he says he will bring back steel. He argues that the founding fathers were protectionist, not because he believes that, but because -- as he openly admits to the author -- draping the founding fathers over an idea is a way to sell it to the American people. He actually had a press event at the US/Mexico border and called for a fence from San Diego to Florida (sic). In the end, Buchanan probably just needed to be taller and richer, less eloquent and more brazen. Steve Forbes had the richer and taller part, but went too far in the emptiness column. Here was someone completely lacking in character and accomplishment, someone who should not have been considered as treasurer of your book club, spending millions to get national press and spout off his terrible ideas that continue to influence the political conversation of the country to this day. Thank god we don't let that happen anymore.
As Lewis says, in one of his many great insights, "this emphasis on who wins is a form of madness." You can't make any money predicting winners, and "the winner in this case has had no effect whatsoever on the debate. The debate has been framed entirely by the losers."
Random tangent: midway through the book, Lewis relates an unsettling exchange with a couple rogue Detroit union guys calling themselves "Citizens for Better Government":
ML: "How many people people are involved in this movement?"
"We don't discuss that. It's national."
ML: "Who is the head of it, nationally?"
"We don't discuss that."
ML: "What's the point of organizing, then?"
"We don't discuss that, either."
ML: "What about Perot?"
"The true grassroots people abandoned Ross Perot. It's the opportunists and the gullibles that stayed with him."
Knowing what we now know -- "economic anxiety" and all that -- this interview struck me as much more nefarious than Lewis realized.
August 8, 2022
No idea when I bought this book, but am a huge Michael Lewis fan, so was probably years ago. Well before I was into US politics.
So it is pretty handy that my favourite topic has been addressed, albeit only fractionally, by a favourite writer.
Lewis is always picking a unique perspective on a less-than unique subject and I love him for that. This time he lifts the lid on the losing Republican presidential candidates for the ‘96 run against President Clinton.
As always, very entertaining, very interesting and often very funny. Probably a generous 4 stars, but what the hell - I like him.
One thing I don’t like … no notes, no bibliography and no index. That’s seems odd to me and he often does that.
So it is pretty handy that my favourite topic has been addressed, albeit only fractionally, by a favourite writer.
Lewis is always picking a unique perspective on a less-than unique subject and I love him for that. This time he lifts the lid on the losing Republican presidential candidates for the ‘96 run against President Clinton.
As always, very entertaining, very interesting and often very funny. Probably a generous 4 stars, but what the hell - I like him.
One thing I don’t like … no notes, no bibliography and no index. That’s seems odd to me and he often does that.
November 3, 2018
Michael Lewis made the topic of politics become bearable and incredibly humorous. He took the sides of the losers because the winners are all boring and similar: dishonest, using big money to discredit opponents. On the other hand, "losers" have many facets: one is entrepreneurial, one is teaching, one is for social morality, but all of them are real and passionate about their causes, which make them interesting for characters analysis and more interesting as people. Michael Lewis took us through the many stories of the campaign and helped us see a more human side of the candidates.
Love the tone of the book. But still I can never stand the world of politics.
Love the tone of the book. But still I can never stand the world of politics.
June 24, 2019
I LOVED THIS BOOK SO MUCH.
I had forgotten how good Michael Lewis is at taking a subject that is nominally boring and infuse it with wit and humor. He's also great at unpacking what's going on - I'm always a little bonked on the head by political campaigns - Lewis gets inside the campaign and talks to the people involved and really seems to get to the meat of the thing.
The subject is the 1996 Presidential Election. He was assigned to write dispatches from the road, a la Hunter S. Thompson style for the New Republic. But instead of focusing on Bill Clinton and Bob Dole (the President and Republican frontrunner), he quickly realizes their campaigns are toothless and boring and actually - essentially the same - as Clinton had co-opted much of Dole's platform as a moderate incumbent.
Anyway, Lewis decides to spend his time with the most interesting Republican candidates - who turn out to be the biggest longshots. I already liked John McCain, but Lewis tells a number of anecdotes about him that would make just about anyone (unless you're some kind of monster) a huge fan. He comes off as one of the only principled people in Washington.
Lewis is a pretty low-key, and bemused reporter - hardly trying to get dirt on anyone - mostly just happy to watch these guys and their staffs do what they do. He spends a fair amount of time just bouncing around the country trying to figure out where to go next.
I loved a book that lets you see behind the curtain and this one uncovers the rot in politics that we're dealing with now. You read it and you can see where the cracks were starting to show even 20+ years ago. It doesn't feel dated at all - and it'll introduce you to Morry "The Grizz" Taylor, a dude I don't remember form the campaign but I'm 100% a fan of now. It also paints Pat Buchanan, Alan Keyes and Bob Dole with a much more nuanced, HUMAN, brush.
This is the kind of book that makes you want to just go and read everything the writer has done.
I had forgotten how good Michael Lewis is at taking a subject that is nominally boring and infuse it with wit and humor. He's also great at unpacking what's going on - I'm always a little bonked on the head by political campaigns - Lewis gets inside the campaign and talks to the people involved and really seems to get to the meat of the thing.
The subject is the 1996 Presidential Election. He was assigned to write dispatches from the road, a la Hunter S. Thompson style for the New Republic. But instead of focusing on Bill Clinton and Bob Dole (the President and Republican frontrunner), he quickly realizes their campaigns are toothless and boring and actually - essentially the same - as Clinton had co-opted much of Dole's platform as a moderate incumbent.
Anyway, Lewis decides to spend his time with the most interesting Republican candidates - who turn out to be the biggest longshots. I already liked John McCain, but Lewis tells a number of anecdotes about him that would make just about anyone (unless you're some kind of monster) a huge fan. He comes off as one of the only principled people in Washington.
Lewis is a pretty low-key, and bemused reporter - hardly trying to get dirt on anyone - mostly just happy to watch these guys and their staffs do what they do. He spends a fair amount of time just bouncing around the country trying to figure out where to go next.
I loved a book that lets you see behind the curtain and this one uncovers the rot in politics that we're dealing with now. You read it and you can see where the cracks were starting to show even 20+ years ago. It doesn't feel dated at all - and it'll introduce you to Morry "The Grizz" Taylor, a dude I don't remember form the campaign but I'm 100% a fan of now. It also paints Pat Buchanan, Alan Keyes and Bob Dole with a much more nuanced, HUMAN, brush.
This is the kind of book that makes you want to just go and read everything the writer has done.
August 18, 2017
I found this book enthralling in a way I didn't expect from the start. I was expecting a book that focused on the nitty gritty minutiae of the 1996 Presidential campaign. While there is a bit of a week-by-week narrative about who went where and how the race unfolded Michael Lewis makes it clear from the onset of the book that he ultimately viewed the race with disdain in large part because the politicians who ended up in the general election (Clinton and Dole) couldn't compare to the eccentric candidates who competed in the primaries without much success.
Lewis is drawn towards candidates like Morry Taylor, Alan Keyes, and Ralph Nader. They make up a much larger portion of the book than they did votes in the election but the stories he is able to tell are much more compelling and it's understandable why he wanted to spend more time with them instead of the front runners.
Also in that category and a real interesting figure in light of the current administration is Pat Buchanan. The passages in the book about Buchanan are hard not to read with Donald Trump in mind and many times you could just change the name and not realize you are reading about events 20 years ago. In retrospect a better knowledge of who Buchanan was and the base he had 20 years ago would have helped me understand the Trump phenomenon over the last couple years.
Ultimately the politician who comes off the best in the book is John McCain. Clearly showcasing the maverick persona that still rings true today (the July 2017 health care vote) McCain is the one politician in the book that rises above the fray and recognizes that neither side deserves scorn for merely having political views you disagree with.
Lewis is drawn towards candidates like Morry Taylor, Alan Keyes, and Ralph Nader. They make up a much larger portion of the book than they did votes in the election but the stories he is able to tell are much more compelling and it's understandable why he wanted to spend more time with them instead of the front runners.
Also in that category and a real interesting figure in light of the current administration is Pat Buchanan. The passages in the book about Buchanan are hard not to read with Donald Trump in mind and many times you could just change the name and not realize you are reading about events 20 years ago. In retrospect a better knowledge of who Buchanan was and the base he had 20 years ago would have helped me understand the Trump phenomenon over the last couple years.
Ultimately the politician who comes off the best in the book is John McCain. Clearly showcasing the maverick persona that still rings true today (the July 2017 health care vote) McCain is the one politician in the book that rises above the fray and recognizes that neither side deserves scorn for merely having political views you disagree with.
January 24, 2019
I was so happy when I found this book. I really enjoyed others I've read by Michael Lewis, Liar's Poker and Flash Boys for example. I had no idea that he had written a presidential campaign diary!
When I think of Michael Lewis I always think of the day trader who started his career at Salomon Brothers and liked to write in secret. But the truth is that Michael Lewis is one of our greatest living journalists. Just because he didn't go to journalism school or work a local newspaper beat doesn't make him any less of a scribe. In fact, I think Lewis stands heads and tails above most of the pros because he really strives to find insight about the human condition in his work.
The mind-numbing routine of the presidential campaign trail has worn down some of the best in the business. Matt Taibbi and Hunter Thompson withered against the crippling boredom of the press planes and bus rides and cold cut buffets and endlessly repeated campaign speeches. During the 1996 campaign, Lewis eschewed the day to day drudgery and attempted to carve his own path to enlightenment amongst the presidential scrum. By giving himself permission to go wherever his whims took him Lewis rises above the phony, stage-managed pretense of the major party race.
Lewis's eye for detail frequently had me laughing out loud. It's unlikely any other tales from the presidential campaign trail will ever get you laughing as much as Trail Fever. But what really sets this apart from everybody else is Lewis's genuine attempts to extract meaning from the mindless, endless fakeness of presidential campaign politics. This book was such a pleasant surprise. Hugely entertaining and insightful.
When I think of Michael Lewis I always think of the day trader who started his career at Salomon Brothers and liked to write in secret. But the truth is that Michael Lewis is one of our greatest living journalists. Just because he didn't go to journalism school or work a local newspaper beat doesn't make him any less of a scribe. In fact, I think Lewis stands heads and tails above most of the pros because he really strives to find insight about the human condition in his work.
The mind-numbing routine of the presidential campaign trail has worn down some of the best in the business. Matt Taibbi and Hunter Thompson withered against the crippling boredom of the press planes and bus rides and cold cut buffets and endlessly repeated campaign speeches. During the 1996 campaign, Lewis eschewed the day to day drudgery and attempted to carve his own path to enlightenment amongst the presidential scrum. By giving himself permission to go wherever his whims took him Lewis rises above the phony, stage-managed pretense of the major party race.
Lewis's eye for detail frequently had me laughing out loud. It's unlikely any other tales from the presidential campaign trail will ever get you laughing as much as Trail Fever. But what really sets this apart from everybody else is Lewis's genuine attempts to extract meaning from the mindless, endless fakeness of presidential campaign politics. This book was such a pleasant surprise. Hugely entertaining and insightful.
March 31, 2013
1996 elections had some interesting characters and that is all this book has to offer--interesting characters. Lewis becomes fascinated with "The Grizz" and seems to lose his point of view for the book, which reads like a character sketch. The book makes a half-hearted attempt to make a statement about American politics as a whole, but Lewis gets so caught up in "The Grizz" that the book settles into a no-mans land between a political read and a character sketch.
Two stars: I expect more from Micheal Lewis.
Two stars: I expect more from Micheal Lewis.
Read
July 31, 2019(Crossposted from https://ethanphirsch.com/2019/07/23/t...)
As an unabashed Michael Lewis fan and reader of most of his published work, I was surprised that I had never heard of his book on the 1996 elections, which I discovered after it was namechecked by Ezra Klein as a favorite book of his in a podcast interview with Lewis (recommended).
The book is written as a chronological diary as Lewis follows aspiring Republican candidates, and then the eventual nominees around the country to caucuses, conventions, and other campaign events. While at first blush this seemed like a lazy attempt to turn a series of musings into a published book, once I begin reading the format makes enough sense, given the relatively mundane day-to-day nature of a Presidential campaign, in which any scandals can consume a series of news cycles, “momentum” is mostly an illusion, and both the micro and macro aspects of the election process end up being lost to memory.
In the book’s introduction, Lewis recounts the remarkably low stakes of the 1996 US Presidential Election due to the backdrop of the United States as a country “on autopilot:” steady (but not spectacular) economic growth, no major conflicts or international conflicts, and a relatively uneventful first term from President Clinton, despite attempts from his adversaries to expose malfeasance and scandals. In short, a comfortably numb state of affairs.
Lewis begins in the early stages of the Republican primary, introducing us to obscure characters whose names have been lost to history (Alan Keyes, Bob Dornan, Lamar Alexander, Phil Gramm), or individuals that elicit a “yeah, I think I know who that is” in 2019: Pat Buchanan, Steve Forbes, and the eventual nominee, Bob Dole, who Lewis struggles to kindly portray (or portray at all) throughout the book.
Among this pool of uninspiring professional politicians is one candidate that stands above the rest in the eyes of the story-starved Lewis. On a whim (lore states that one of his factory-floor employees implored him to run), Maurice “Morry” Taylor, the millionaire CEO of the now-absorbed tire manufacturer Titan Tire, was met with the question that prods at the most ego-driven among us: “why not me?,” before putting his own name in the running to represent the 1996 Republican Party as an heir to his billionaire businessman predecessor, Ross Perot.
As opposed to most businesspeople-turned-politicians (and fiscal conservatives), Taylor’s preoccupation with “managing the government like a business” did not begin and end with balancing the Federal Budget. Employing a tactic revived by Trump in 2016 (though actually carrying it out, in Taylor’s case), Taylor funded his own campaign, and in the absence of “rented strangers” (Lewis’ term for the campaign staff that surrounds a candidate and President), spent more than $6 million of his own funds on a series of innovative (and questionably illegal) stunts to rally the vote: running $5,000 raffles in early-election districts, flooding potential supporters with free swag, and holding a rally of over 6,000 motorcyclists in a party organized for the Republican party.
Taylor’s irreverence and ingenuity hardly ended at his electioneering: Taylor’s ideas stood far apart from his Republican competitors, who he claimed were just as poisoned as Clinton’s Democrats and the broader two-party centrist system. Some of Taylor’s ideas were on the sensible, everyman side, such as implementing term limits (one) for all politicians, advocating for more States’ rights and a smaller government, simplifying the tax code, and removing money from politics. The ones that Lewis, and Taylor’s enthusiastic (but small) electorate tended to veer towards entertainingly implausible, including putting a 10-year moratorium on law schools (to prevent lawyers from entering the DC fray), closing all embassies around the world (“international business is done over the phone and fax”), and shutting down the Pentagon ( and turning it into a hotel for visiting Representatives and Senators, who would no longer be able to maintain a separate home away from their district.) Ironically, Taylor’s brutal and symbolic approach to cost-cutting the White House is reminiscent of the extreme cost-cutting currently underway in Mexico under newly-elected President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
As the campaign drones on and the more entertaining candidates make way for the purposefully staid Dole vs the incumbent Clinton, the book loses much of its momentum, and Lewis palpably struggles to continue to create momentum all the way to the end of the election. At this point, Lewis introduces many then-readers to Senator John McCain of Arizona, then on the campaign trail for Dole. McCain, along with Taylor, come away as the other two figures unscathed by Lewis’ cynical and honest take on politics (an aside: Lewis’ recounting of McCain’s humility, open candor, and heroics as a POW for over 5 years only serve to further inflame Trump’s deplorable treatment of McCain in his final months.)
The 1996 election, and Lewis’ coverage, touch on certain issues that proved prescient and have turned front-and-center as Trump has risen to power, namely a visit to the Mexican border, where Lewis marvels at the mass of Mexican hopefuls doggedly risking it all to reach the US, as well as meeting incipient morals-based Evangelicals and their faith leaders in Colorado Springs.
Lewis grows increasingly frustrated with the minimal ideological space between the two candidates in an attempt to win over Centrists, and the broader two-party system in general. His most pronounced contempt is held for the “rented strangers” and pollsters, the career servants of the political class, who shape the opinions and image of the mainstream candidates to broaden their appeal to the largest possible population, muddying their appeal and held views beyond all recognition in the process.
Lewis comes away more or less disgusted with the entire political class (excluding McCain and a cameo from Green Party candidate Ralph Nader), and closes the book with a call to action for a reform of campaign finance and the broader influence of money in politics, a similar (and hopefully not altogether hopeless) call to action we’ve heard from Bernie Sanders and others over the past decade or so.
Given Lewis’ soft re-entry into politics writing this past year, the Fifth Risk (reviewed here: https://ethanphirsch.com/2019/02/10/f...), which essentially calls for sanity and basic competence in politics, it is incredibly entertaining to see a younger Lewis provide a much more unhinged and inflammatory take on politics, one where he vacillates between Republican and Democrat, Dole and Clinton, seemingly on a whim, ultimately casting his vote for Nader and his reputed $5,000 Presidential campaign. Given the massive, 24-person Democratic Party Primary, as well as Trump’s continued bloviating from the White House, one wishes that a less reformed Lewis might return for one more bite at the apple.
As an unabashed Michael Lewis fan and reader of most of his published work, I was surprised that I had never heard of his book on the 1996 elections, which I discovered after it was namechecked by Ezra Klein as a favorite book of his in a podcast interview with Lewis (recommended).
The book is written as a chronological diary as Lewis follows aspiring Republican candidates, and then the eventual nominees around the country to caucuses, conventions, and other campaign events. While at first blush this seemed like a lazy attempt to turn a series of musings into a published book, once I begin reading the format makes enough sense, given the relatively mundane day-to-day nature of a Presidential campaign, in which any scandals can consume a series of news cycles, “momentum” is mostly an illusion, and both the micro and macro aspects of the election process end up being lost to memory.
In the book’s introduction, Lewis recounts the remarkably low stakes of the 1996 US Presidential Election due to the backdrop of the United States as a country “on autopilot:” steady (but not spectacular) economic growth, no major conflicts or international conflicts, and a relatively uneventful first term from President Clinton, despite attempts from his adversaries to expose malfeasance and scandals. In short, a comfortably numb state of affairs.
Lewis begins in the early stages of the Republican primary, introducing us to obscure characters whose names have been lost to history (Alan Keyes, Bob Dornan, Lamar Alexander, Phil Gramm), or individuals that elicit a “yeah, I think I know who that is” in 2019: Pat Buchanan, Steve Forbes, and the eventual nominee, Bob Dole, who Lewis struggles to kindly portray (or portray at all) throughout the book.
Among this pool of uninspiring professional politicians is one candidate that stands above the rest in the eyes of the story-starved Lewis. On a whim (lore states that one of his factory-floor employees implored him to run), Maurice “Morry” Taylor, the millionaire CEO of the now-absorbed tire manufacturer Titan Tire, was met with the question that prods at the most ego-driven among us: “why not me?,” before putting his own name in the running to represent the 1996 Republican Party as an heir to his billionaire businessman predecessor, Ross Perot.
As opposed to most businesspeople-turned-politicians (and fiscal conservatives), Taylor’s preoccupation with “managing the government like a business” did not begin and end with balancing the Federal Budget. Employing a tactic revived by Trump in 2016 (though actually carrying it out, in Taylor’s case), Taylor funded his own campaign, and in the absence of “rented strangers” (Lewis’ term for the campaign staff that surrounds a candidate and President), spent more than $6 million of his own funds on a series of innovative (and questionably illegal) stunts to rally the vote: running $5,000 raffles in early-election districts, flooding potential supporters with free swag, and holding a rally of over 6,000 motorcyclists in a party organized for the Republican party.
Taylor’s irreverence and ingenuity hardly ended at his electioneering: Taylor’s ideas stood far apart from his Republican competitors, who he claimed were just as poisoned as Clinton’s Democrats and the broader two-party centrist system. Some of Taylor’s ideas were on the sensible, everyman side, such as implementing term limits (one) for all politicians, advocating for more States’ rights and a smaller government, simplifying the tax code, and removing money from politics. The ones that Lewis, and Taylor’s enthusiastic (but small) electorate tended to veer towards entertainingly implausible, including putting a 10-year moratorium on law schools (to prevent lawyers from entering the DC fray), closing all embassies around the world (“international business is done over the phone and fax”), and shutting down the Pentagon ( and turning it into a hotel for visiting Representatives and Senators, who would no longer be able to maintain a separate home away from their district.) Ironically, Taylor’s brutal and symbolic approach to cost-cutting the White House is reminiscent of the extreme cost-cutting currently underway in Mexico under newly-elected President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
As the campaign drones on and the more entertaining candidates make way for the purposefully staid Dole vs the incumbent Clinton, the book loses much of its momentum, and Lewis palpably struggles to continue to create momentum all the way to the end of the election. At this point, Lewis introduces many then-readers to Senator John McCain of Arizona, then on the campaign trail for Dole. McCain, along with Taylor, come away as the other two figures unscathed by Lewis’ cynical and honest take on politics (an aside: Lewis’ recounting of McCain’s humility, open candor, and heroics as a POW for over 5 years only serve to further inflame Trump’s deplorable treatment of McCain in his final months.)
The 1996 election, and Lewis’ coverage, touch on certain issues that proved prescient and have turned front-and-center as Trump has risen to power, namely a visit to the Mexican border, where Lewis marvels at the mass of Mexican hopefuls doggedly risking it all to reach the US, as well as meeting incipient morals-based Evangelicals and their faith leaders in Colorado Springs.
Lewis grows increasingly frustrated with the minimal ideological space between the two candidates in an attempt to win over Centrists, and the broader two-party system in general. His most pronounced contempt is held for the “rented strangers” and pollsters, the career servants of the political class, who shape the opinions and image of the mainstream candidates to broaden their appeal to the largest possible population, muddying their appeal and held views beyond all recognition in the process.
Lewis comes away more or less disgusted with the entire political class (excluding McCain and a cameo from Green Party candidate Ralph Nader), and closes the book with a call to action for a reform of campaign finance and the broader influence of money in politics, a similar (and hopefully not altogether hopeless) call to action we’ve heard from Bernie Sanders and others over the past decade or so.
Given Lewis’ soft re-entry into politics writing this past year, the Fifth Risk (reviewed here: https://ethanphirsch.com/2019/02/10/f...), which essentially calls for sanity and basic competence in politics, it is incredibly entertaining to see a younger Lewis provide a much more unhinged and inflammatory take on politics, one where he vacillates between Republican and Democrat, Dole and Clinton, seemingly on a whim, ultimately casting his vote for Nader and his reputed $5,000 Presidential campaign. Given the massive, 24-person Democratic Party Primary, as well as Trump’s continued bloviating from the White House, one wishes that a less reformed Lewis might return for one more bite at the apple.
October 18, 2024
I can’t decide if it’s heartening or disheartening to know that the vanity and stupidity of American elections persist 30 years later. Fun book, though!
May 21, 2022
Dated in some ways, spot on in others, Lewis's trip though the 1996 presidential election is one of his best-written books, a great ride. You can feel his affection for the "losers" of the title in his prose, which falls off markedly in energy once the primaries end and he's left with the 2 1/2 main candidates. Read through to the end for his deeply personal musings on John McCain.
June 5, 2011
Wow, I remembered this book being far better than it actually was. Theoretically a hilarious look at the losing candidates in the 1996 presidential election, it ends up being just a basket of anecdotes and quick character sketches. No arcs, but an anti-arc carving out the whitespace around Clinton's march to re-election.
I originally read it during the '08 presidential election, and I think my enjoyment then was at discovering that Keyes was just as ridiculous in 1996 as he was in 2004 and 2008. But there's also an uncanny quality at times that rescues it from being a total loss: getting to see many future political actors before they became notable, stunned by the incongruity or predictability of their later feats. Ted Haggard, J.D. Hayworth, and others make brief cameos through the book as we get an unexpected glimpse at the GOP farm league.
Unless you really love Michael Lewis and/or political shenanigans, I wouldn't recommend it.
I originally read it during the '08 presidential election, and I think my enjoyment then was at discovering that Keyes was just as ridiculous in 1996 as he was in 2004 and 2008. But there's also an uncanny quality at times that rescues it from being a total loss: getting to see many future political actors before they became notable, stunned by the incongruity or predictability of their later feats. Ted Haggard, J.D. Hayworth, and others make brief cameos through the book as we get an unexpected glimpse at the GOP farm league.
Unless you really love Michael Lewis and/or political shenanigans, I wouldn't recommend it.
June 7, 2010
I'd likely have enjoyed this a good bit more if (a) I didn't think Michael Lewis was so freakishly awesome and (b) I hadn't read DFW's truly outstanding essay, "Up, Simba" (from Consider the Lobster). Comes off kind of mean-spirited, supercilious and unsure of itself.
NB: This was authored before Lewis married MTV VJ (and fantasy of my adolescence, well one anyway) Tabitha Soren, at least going by the omitted shout-out in the ACKs, but he does mention friend "Tabitha Sornberger", who "read and improved the author without unnerving his manuscript", which I think can be plausibly read as "Tabitha Soren" and "fucked the author proper." Well-played, Mr. Lewis!
NB: This was authored before Lewis married MTV VJ (and fantasy of my adolescence, well one anyway) Tabitha Soren, at least going by the omitted shout-out in the ACKs, but he does mention friend "Tabitha Sornberger", who "read and improved the author without unnerving his manuscript", which I think can be plausibly read as "Tabitha Soren" and "fucked the author proper." Well-played, Mr. Lewis!
August 16, 2011
It's not Fear and Loathing and the election it covers is among the most insignificant in our country's history, but Lewis is a great writer and there's a lot in here that I really enjoyed. It was kind of refreshing to read about our not-so-distant past where Pat Buchanan was the most marginal candidate that the Republicans considered nominating. The truly prescient part was where professional nut-case Alan Keyes, with a platform very similar to Michele Bachmann's, said that he wasn't running to win that election, but so a candidate 20 years from then could win. Made me shiver a little bit, but generally made me feel nostalgic for that era of politics; it was bad but the worst that could happen was a bogus impeachment as compared to today's threat of default.
April 22, 2025
In "Losers" (formerly known, in an apparent effort to scare off as many readers as possible, as "Trail Fever"), Michael Lewis takes on the clown car that was the 1996 Republican presidential field, a lineup of hacks disingenuously and sloppily competing for the privilege of getting shellacked in the general election by the generational political force of nature that was Bill Clinton who, whatever his virtues, had a world-historical gift for persuasively feigning authenticity that easily exceeded that of all the Republican pretenders combined.
I was there when it happened, but some of these farces are even more odious than I remembered them being. There's Phil Gramm--there is no politician whose smug mug I ever wanted to punch more squarely on the nose than dishonest, charisma-free Phil (until J. D. Vance came along, that is (JUST KIDDING, Stasi brownshirts at the White House, DOJ, and the FBI!)). (Fruitlessly) voting against Phil Gramm for Senate in the 1996 general election in Texas remains the highlight of my political career. There's also the lugubrious nepo baby Steve Forbes. Few things in the book are more funny--and also more disturbing, sad, and pathetic--than Lewis's account of Forbes making his way through a buffet line and eating lunch solo at a campaign event. And who could forget LAMAR!, i.e., Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander, whom anyone with any sense had already forgotten years ago and with respect to whom the only rational response when his face (dis)graces your TV screen is to frantically fumble for your remote to change the channel.
And did I mention Bob Dole, who managed to win the race to be the first to clamber to the top of this dung hill, thereby earning the right to get clobbered by Slick Willy? At least Dole partially redeemed himself with ironic post-retirement commercials and funny "Daily Show" appearances.
Lewis, rightly, spend comparatively little time with these losers. Even at the end, when the general campaign has throttled him down to the narrow window of Clinton v. Dole, he preserves his sanity by sneaking off to cover the other minor candidates anyways, i.e., the losers who aren't really LOSERS: Morry Taylor, the self-made tire-manufacturing tycoon who was out so fast I don't even remember him but who is wildly entertaining and who in a parallel universe is Donald Trump without the crassness, narcissism, and fondness for autocracy; Alan Keyes, the culture-wars crusader who has the misfortune of being Black in the mid-1990s Republican party but comes off as sincere (perhaps even creepily so); Pat Buchanan, whom I should probably have included in the major-candidate-flops paragraph above due to the scares he gave Dole early on and who appears eerily prescient in 2025, i.e., a Trumpian populist who actually believes what he's saying and who does, in fact, support the American form of government; and John McCain, Senator from Arizona, who stays out of the race and loyally supports Dole even though he knows the campaign is doomed. This is impressive, straight-talking John McCain before the gimmick of the Straight-Talk Express, the body-blow of Dubya's lies about him in the 2000 South Carolina primary, and selling his reputation in 2008 for the mess of porridge that was naming Sarah Palin as his running mate. I miss the mid-1990s John McCain. Lewis loves him.
This is Lewis not quite yet in his imperial period . . . but it sure is a lot of fun, although maybe not as much if you didn't live through it. I laughed out loud frequently.
And it sure is easier to read 30 years later, when you know who wins in the end. I voted for Bill Clinton three times, including the 1992 Pennsylvania presidential primary, which is my only meaningful vote in a presidential election since I've lived ever since in deep blue or deep red states. Always looming in the background Clinton, who doth bestride the narrow world of the 1996 Republican primary like a colossus, with his petty Republican challengers walking about under his huge legs and peeping about to find themselves dishonorable political graves . . .
I was there when it happened, but some of these farces are even more odious than I remembered them being. There's Phil Gramm--there is no politician whose smug mug I ever wanted to punch more squarely on the nose than dishonest, charisma-free Phil (until J. D. Vance came along, that is (JUST KIDDING, Stasi brownshirts at the White House, DOJ, and the FBI!)). (Fruitlessly) voting against Phil Gramm for Senate in the 1996 general election in Texas remains the highlight of my political career. There's also the lugubrious nepo baby Steve Forbes. Few things in the book are more funny--and also more disturbing, sad, and pathetic--than Lewis's account of Forbes making his way through a buffet line and eating lunch solo at a campaign event. And who could forget LAMAR!, i.e., Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander, whom anyone with any sense had already forgotten years ago and with respect to whom the only rational response when his face (dis)graces your TV screen is to frantically fumble for your remote to change the channel.
And did I mention Bob Dole, who managed to win the race to be the first to clamber to the top of this dung hill, thereby earning the right to get clobbered by Slick Willy? At least Dole partially redeemed himself with ironic post-retirement commercials and funny "Daily Show" appearances.
Lewis, rightly, spend comparatively little time with these losers. Even at the end, when the general campaign has throttled him down to the narrow window of Clinton v. Dole, he preserves his sanity by sneaking off to cover the other minor candidates anyways, i.e., the losers who aren't really LOSERS: Morry Taylor, the self-made tire-manufacturing tycoon who was out so fast I don't even remember him but who is wildly entertaining and who in a parallel universe is Donald Trump without the crassness, narcissism, and fondness for autocracy; Alan Keyes, the culture-wars crusader who has the misfortune of being Black in the mid-1990s Republican party but comes off as sincere (perhaps even creepily so); Pat Buchanan, whom I should probably have included in the major-candidate-flops paragraph above due to the scares he gave Dole early on and who appears eerily prescient in 2025, i.e., a Trumpian populist who actually believes what he's saying and who does, in fact, support the American form of government; and John McCain, Senator from Arizona, who stays out of the race and loyally supports Dole even though he knows the campaign is doomed. This is impressive, straight-talking John McCain before the gimmick of the Straight-Talk Express, the body-blow of Dubya's lies about him in the 2000 South Carolina primary, and selling his reputation in 2008 for the mess of porridge that was naming Sarah Palin as his running mate. I miss the mid-1990s John McCain. Lewis loves him.
This is Lewis not quite yet in his imperial period . . . but it sure is a lot of fun, although maybe not as much if you didn't live through it. I laughed out loud frequently.
And it sure is easier to read 30 years later, when you know who wins in the end. I voted for Bill Clinton three times, including the 1992 Pennsylvania presidential primary, which is my only meaningful vote in a presidential election since I've lived ever since in deep blue or deep red states. Always looming in the background Clinton, who doth bestride the narrow world of the 1996 Republican primary like a colossus, with his petty Republican challengers walking about under his huge legs and peeping about to find themselves dishonorable political graves . . .
May 24, 2021
Rooting for American Presidential Underdogs
Has overexposure numbed the American public to indifference about Presidential elections? Or are more deliberate manipulations thwarting voter turnout?
No doubt the latest election cycle and continuing efforts to shape future voter participation suggest much has changed since Michael Lewis penned his 1997 “Losers” odyssey through the 1996 Presidential campaign.
But just how much and why?
Every four years American Presidential hopefuls put on a performance seemingly fulfilling Juvenal’s satirical observation almost two thousand years ago: pacify the public with “bread and circuses” so they forget to revolt against what they don’t like.
Or in today’s world and terms about politicians, voters and the process, Lewis observed about Presidential campaigns: “The phenomenon is circular: the less sentient the electorate, the more easily it can be cynically manipulated; the more cynical the manipulations, the less sentient the electorate.”
The author’s focus on unsuccessful Presidential aspirants shows more original, even extreme views and tactics seem to appear during the earlier stages of these campaigns with the run up primaries than after the major party conventions. The quarterfinals and semifinals are often more interesting than the main event.
The major contenders – Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, even Ross Perot – get less attention in this yearlong diary because of not only the overwhelming media focus but also the packaging of the candidates and their positions by “the rented strangers” surrounding them.
To be sure, there are colorful depictions such as Lewis’ fondness for the adventuresome Morry Taylor or the elusive Pat Buchanan. Both espouse out-of-the-mainstream views and behavior such as Taylor’s unpublished, possibly prescient manuscript about what do with lawyers and other ways to fix Washington.
Despite his wry comments about the contenders and process Lewis does appreciate the few who show statesmanship qualities. You might read Chapter 11 and the Epilogue for a thoughtful portrait of the late Senator John McCain standing in stark relief to the pack surrounding him.
Twenty years later, the sound and fury of recent elections seem to have shaken off the public drowsiness to these contests. Have brash unfettered opinions amped by the media tapped into years of accumulating frustration with the election marketing process and woken a sleeping giant? Or has the American electorate become so large it is collapsing back into complacent indifference?
And will Lewis’ observations simply have been updated by more elaborate candidate and media performances to get so much from so many for so few?
It’s your vote…make the effort to make it count every time.
Has overexposure numbed the American public to indifference about Presidential elections? Or are more deliberate manipulations thwarting voter turnout?
No doubt the latest election cycle and continuing efforts to shape future voter participation suggest much has changed since Michael Lewis penned his 1997 “Losers” odyssey through the 1996 Presidential campaign.
But just how much and why?
Every four years American Presidential hopefuls put on a performance seemingly fulfilling Juvenal’s satirical observation almost two thousand years ago: pacify the public with “bread and circuses” so they forget to revolt against what they don’t like.
Or in today’s world and terms about politicians, voters and the process, Lewis observed about Presidential campaigns: “The phenomenon is circular: the less sentient the electorate, the more easily it can be cynically manipulated; the more cynical the manipulations, the less sentient the electorate.”
The author’s focus on unsuccessful Presidential aspirants shows more original, even extreme views and tactics seem to appear during the earlier stages of these campaigns with the run up primaries than after the major party conventions. The quarterfinals and semifinals are often more interesting than the main event.
The major contenders – Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, even Ross Perot – get less attention in this yearlong diary because of not only the overwhelming media focus but also the packaging of the candidates and their positions by “the rented strangers” surrounding them.
To be sure, there are colorful depictions such as Lewis’ fondness for the adventuresome Morry Taylor or the elusive Pat Buchanan. Both espouse out-of-the-mainstream views and behavior such as Taylor’s unpublished, possibly prescient manuscript about what do with lawyers and other ways to fix Washington.
Despite his wry comments about the contenders and process Lewis does appreciate the few who show statesmanship qualities. You might read Chapter 11 and the Epilogue for a thoughtful portrait of the late Senator John McCain standing in stark relief to the pack surrounding him.
Twenty years later, the sound and fury of recent elections seem to have shaken off the public drowsiness to these contests. Have brash unfettered opinions amped by the media tapped into years of accumulating frustration with the election marketing process and woken a sleeping giant? Or has the American electorate become so large it is collapsing back into complacent indifference?
And will Lewis’ observations simply have been updated by more elaborate candidate and media performances to get so much from so many for so few?
It’s your vote…make the effort to make it count every time.
June 17, 2017
Disclaimer: I'm writing this review a good nine months after I finished reading the book, because of procrastination and general laziness...
I almost considered putting this on the "humour" shelf, because it's an examination of the eccentric, the absurd, and the normal people (who are also crazy, just for the record), when it comes to the 1996 election campaign. This book is what happens when you send a reporter to follow a campaign, but then let him wander wherever he wants, rather than following the front runners. Lewis' journey starts conventionally enough, with him following the leaders in the Republican primaries, but it rapidly goes off track as he realizes that the winners are usually stage managed, boring, and disingenuous. It's the losers who are more interesting, and this realization quickly leads him deep into the weeds. Much of the book follows the campaigns of these characters, with occasional forays to try and understand their backgrounds or supporters.
It is well written throughout, and fascinating by times, as one would expect from Michael Lewis. But that's really the problem, because it's also rather longer than it probably should have been, as one would expect from Michael Lewis. I really enjoyed a lot of his random tangents, but the book (by design) lacks an direction or focus, and at times it ventures a bit too far into the weeds (or at least into weeds that I'm less interested in...). There are also passages where he rather strongly shows his own biases against the Republican party and against religion. Which is fine -- he's allowed to have his opinions -- but in particular I didn't really appreciate his at times dismissive and derogatory comments on religion and religious people.
I've put this book at three stars. The book has very interesting insights into how the political machine works, in particular the stage managed risk aversion of front runners, and the strangeness of how our political sausages are made. I found this book particularly interesting in light of Trump's rise to power, which was ongoing as I was reading this. Trump is the fringe candidate who refuses to play by the rules, the very kind of candidate who Lewis was most interested by, but who this time was not the loser. Lewis by no means predicted Trump, but he certainly noted that the mainstream candidates failed to connect with real people, and Trump is the logical conclusion of forces at work even then. That being said, it's a long book and you need to endure some dry spells between the interesting anecdotes. Add that to the fact that I found some of his comments and characterizations to be offensive, and I put it down to a three star.
I almost considered putting this on the "humour" shelf, because it's an examination of the eccentric, the absurd, and the normal people (who are also crazy, just for the record), when it comes to the 1996 election campaign. This book is what happens when you send a reporter to follow a campaign, but then let him wander wherever he wants, rather than following the front runners. Lewis' journey starts conventionally enough, with him following the leaders in the Republican primaries, but it rapidly goes off track as he realizes that the winners are usually stage managed, boring, and disingenuous. It's the losers who are more interesting, and this realization quickly leads him deep into the weeds. Much of the book follows the campaigns of these characters, with occasional forays to try and understand their backgrounds or supporters.
It is well written throughout, and fascinating by times, as one would expect from Michael Lewis. But that's really the problem, because it's also rather longer than it probably should have been, as one would expect from Michael Lewis. I really enjoyed a lot of his random tangents, but the book (by design) lacks an direction or focus, and at times it ventures a bit too far into the weeds (or at least into weeds that I'm less interested in...). There are also passages where he rather strongly shows his own biases against the Republican party and against religion. Which is fine -- he's allowed to have his opinions -- but in particular I didn't really appreciate his at times dismissive and derogatory comments on religion and religious people.
I've put this book at three stars. The book has very interesting insights into how the political machine works, in particular the stage managed risk aversion of front runners, and the strangeness of how our political sausages are made. I found this book particularly interesting in light of Trump's rise to power, which was ongoing as I was reading this. Trump is the fringe candidate who refuses to play by the rules, the very kind of candidate who Lewis was most interested by, but who this time was not the loser. Lewis by no means predicted Trump, but he certainly noted that the mainstream candidates failed to connect with real people, and Trump is the logical conclusion of forces at work even then. That being said, it's a long book and you need to endure some dry spells between the interesting anecdotes. Add that to the fact that I found some of his comments and characterizations to be offensive, and I put it down to a three star.
April 26, 2024
“Those who are attracted to Dole’s vision of life in Russell, Kansas, need to spend a little time here. It turns out there’s a reason ambitious people like Dole have been fleeing the place in droves: while its mythical counterpart grows in stature, the actual Russell has been slowly withering. A bleak local economic history could be written from inside any store on Main Street. For example, the biggest and oldest store—a department store called Bankers, for which Dole modeled clothes—opened in 1881, ten years after Russell was founded, beside the new tracks laid by the Union Pacific Railroad. It prospered through the oil boom of the 1920s and the farming boom of the 1940s, reaching its apogee in the 1950s, when it stocked three full floors of dry goods. Since then the store’s business has gradually waned so that it now occupies barely one floor, some of which is given over to the sale of Bob Dole paraphernalia. Where once there were gardening tools there are now rows of Dole buttons, stickers, T-shirts, and caps. The oldest family-owned business in Kansas will probably soon close for lack of business and of a family member willing to live in Russell. “I’d manage the place,” says one of the heirs, who lives in Kansas City, “but only if you put it on a truck and moved it to another town.”
July 14, 2020
I should preface my review with two key notes:
1) I love politics
2) Michael Lewis is one of my favorite writers
That said, this was not a great book. If I could give it 2.5 stars, I would. I just googled to see how many books Lewis has written and landed on Bookscrolling.com, where they have a ranking for all of his books. Losers was ranked 14th out of 17 books. So maybe that is just confirmation bias, I don't know. I do know the first 200 pages were interesting and the final 100 pages were a disjointed mess. Not surprisingly, this book is all/mostly(?) dispatches from the road for The New Republic. And while there's a lot of first person in all/most(?) of Lewis' books, there was just way too much of it in this tomb. There's a lack of maturity to the writing and insight, at least compared with many of his more recent books, which given that this was his fourth book and written in 1996 should not be that surprising.
Still, if you like politics and don't remember or have never heard of Morry Taylor, there's a lot to like here.
1) I love politics
2) Michael Lewis is one of my favorite writers
That said, this was not a great book. If I could give it 2.5 stars, I would. I just googled to see how many books Lewis has written and landed on Bookscrolling.com, where they have a ranking for all of his books. Losers was ranked 14th out of 17 books. So maybe that is just confirmation bias, I don't know. I do know the first 200 pages were interesting and the final 100 pages were a disjointed mess. Not surprisingly, this book is all/mostly(?) dispatches from the road for The New Republic. And while there's a lot of first person in all/most(?) of Lewis' books, there was just way too much of it in this tomb. There's a lack of maturity to the writing and insight, at least compared with many of his more recent books, which given that this was his fourth book and written in 1996 should not be that surprising.
Still, if you like politics and don't remember or have never heard of Morry Taylor, there's a lot to like here.
February 27, 2021
This book is a gold mine that lies on my bookshelf for years and I didn't bother to open it. And the minute I read page one I know it's going to be a good read. Yes Lewis never let me down.
His beautiful writing style, the sense of cool and humor, the interesting idea of spending a whole year for keeping record of following campaign candidates in 1996, all combined well in this book.
I am really not familiar with most of the names in the book, except Clinton. Back in 1996 I had no idea about American politics. But soon when reading it I was immediately fascinated with some of the funny guys. Especially Taylor, who reads so much like Trump, outspoken and having a simple way to reform American government, by killing all lawyers, by running the government by real businessman.
Also there are various really eye opening details of how a campaign is run and how silly and fake the candidates could be. No wonder Trump always say fake this, and fake that.
I read it by forty page a day, and really think i may want to read it again maybe someday.
His beautiful writing style, the sense of cool and humor, the interesting idea of spending a whole year for keeping record of following campaign candidates in 1996, all combined well in this book.
I am really not familiar with most of the names in the book, except Clinton. Back in 1996 I had no idea about American politics. But soon when reading it I was immediately fascinated with some of the funny guys. Especially Taylor, who reads so much like Trump, outspoken and having a simple way to reform American government, by killing all lawyers, by running the government by real businessman.
Also there are various really eye opening details of how a campaign is run and how silly and fake the candidates could be. No wonder Trump always say fake this, and fake that.
I read it by forty page a day, and really think i may want to read it again maybe someday.
September 6, 2021
Andrew Sullivan interviewed Lewis on his substack and lauded specifically this book (without name) and I immediately googled and ordered it.
Of course it’s fascinating to illuminate the primary race, then the presidential election, from the perspective of the losers. The biggest takeaway, though, is that 1996 was *thee* election to do it. I was too young to care (yet old enough to vote) in 1996. This book highlights the way both candidates and the entire process highlighted… nothing of substance.
Many of the losers—Ralph Nader said it bluntly in this book—were the ones making explicit points of exception to the status quo but got nowhere: in the primaries the “process” and its handlers made Dole the candidate because of his blandness, then Clinton stole every ounce of conservative rhetoric out from under him (as he had in 1992, i.e. urban crime) and trotted to a second term.
Though the update to the paperback edition was written in 2000, Lewis’ analysis makes the inevitability of Trump in 2016 plain. Its fascinating to look back and see the writing on the wall so clearly.
Of course it’s fascinating to illuminate the primary race, then the presidential election, from the perspective of the losers. The biggest takeaway, though, is that 1996 was *thee* election to do it. I was too young to care (yet old enough to vote) in 1996. This book highlights the way both candidates and the entire process highlighted… nothing of substance.
Many of the losers—Ralph Nader said it bluntly in this book—were the ones making explicit points of exception to the status quo but got nowhere: in the primaries the “process” and its handlers made Dole the candidate because of his blandness, then Clinton stole every ounce of conservative rhetoric out from under him (as he had in 1992, i.e. urban crime) and trotted to a second term.
Though the update to the paperback edition was written in 2000, Lewis’ analysis makes the inevitability of Trump in 2016 plain. Its fascinating to look back and see the writing on the wall so clearly.
May 1, 2025
This is a wonderful book: I owe my good fortune to have read it to a recommendation from a friend, and I'm most grateful--otherwise I'd never even have heard of it. While it seems almost nostalgic in our current era of social media-driven, fragmented, polarized, algorithmized, pointlessly and aggressively hostile politics, it's still a little slice of history, filled with insights into the general weirdness of the political process.
Michael Lewis is the best kind of political journalist: self-aware (enough so that he understands his own partisan impulses and can head them off before they damage his ability to deliver a fair story), clever, tireless, and committed to old-fashioned shoe leather reporting.
I hope he still is, in this era when so many reporters just wait in their office or media room for the next tweet to come in from some consultant massaging talking points and poll results.
Michael Lewis is the best kind of political journalist: self-aware (enough so that he understands his own partisan impulses and can head them off before they damage his ability to deliver a fair story), clever, tireless, and committed to old-fashioned shoe leather reporting.
I hope he still is, in this era when so many reporters just wait in their office or media room for the next tweet to come in from some consultant massaging talking points and poll results.
February 6, 2022
Superbly-written. Somehow both deeply cynical and full of self-aware naiveté. The characterisations of the titular (mostly) Republican losers of the 1996 presidential race lay bare the absurdity of American politics 25 years ago. The falseness of the candidates. The rarity of genuine displays of emotion. The ludicrous power battles. The billionaires trying to buy their way in to power. The failure of politics. It's difficult now, particularly for someone outside of the US, to picture some of the candidates, so faded from memory they are but Lewis's interpretations of politics feel utterly fresh.
July 14, 2022
An elegy for the past
I read an interview with Tim Miller, the GOP operative turned author. He had said it was his favorite campaign book and so I picked it up.
I'm a fan of Mr. Lewis and the book was a fun, easy read. What strikes you, reading about 1996 in 2022, is how little we knew about what came to pass - the absolute tribalism between the parties and the death of even the pretense of bipartisanship; and the rise of the religious right to the point of taking over one party. In "Losers," you see GOP pols treading a thin line on abortion unlike now. I remember 1996 and how divided it felt and now long for those days.
I read an interview with Tim Miller, the GOP operative turned author. He had said it was his favorite campaign book and so I picked it up.
I'm a fan of Mr. Lewis and the book was a fun, easy read. What strikes you, reading about 1996 in 2022, is how little we knew about what came to pass - the absolute tribalism between the parties and the death of even the pretense of bipartisanship; and the rise of the religious right to the point of taking over one party. In "Losers," you see GOP pols treading a thin line on abortion unlike now. I remember 1996 and how divided it felt and now long for those days.
October 10, 2023
Lewis' most underrated work. His examination of the 1996 republican primary circuit so clearly shows how American politics began to evolve in the 2000s. Each figure in the primary could form a sort of Trump composite- he combined each factor which gave them their moderate success into a political juggernaut. Lewis shows how Bob Dole offered potentially no avenue to beat Clinton- he was competing with a savvy political chameleon. The intricacies of each primary are so dynamic, and peeling back the onion of the last campaign before social media leads to mountains of insight and premonition as to what politics have become.
November 21, 2022
This is probably my favorite Michael Lewis book, although most people haven't heard of it. After Clinton's first term, it was pretty clear he was popular enough to carry the election. As is often the case, this brought out a lot of other-party (in this case Republican) candidates. Lewis was a journalist new to election coverage, and quickly got bored with boring candidates refusing to takes risks. Instead he's continually drawn to the candidates operating well outside of the standard playbook (especially Morry "The Grizz" Taylor, but also Alan Keyes and Pat Buchanan)
February 11, 2022
Russillo was right: an incredibly prescient book foreshadowing where we were headed.
A couple favorite quotes:
- "Thus people who take their power for granted share something with people who have no power: in neither is there any strong impulse to activism. The rich, like the poor, lead lives filled with foregone conclusions"
- "The more innocent your life, the less you have to say about your fate"
A couple favorite quotes:
- "Thus people who take their power for granted share something with people who have no power: in neither is there any strong impulse to activism. The rich, like the poor, lead lives filled with foregone conclusions"
- "The more innocent your life, the less you have to say about your fate"
October 26, 2025
I read this as Trail Fever, but I guess it was published under this title too! Interesting book covering politics at all tiers in America. Perhaps weakened a bit by Lewis’s own interest in certain candidates and excessively 2D portraits of others, it remains a funny and memorable read. The term Rented Strangers in particular is an excellent descriptor for the agents of the political machine. Hard to say if this is still as relevant today in the internet age as it once was.
February 11, 2018
not the greatest Lewis, I have read, but a fascinating insight into politics as it is practiced at the Presidential level, and as a precursor to the 2016 race. Lewis notes that Buchanan whips up a fervent support base on economic fear, in the midst of a boom and wonders, what could happen if we had a downturn, or a war.
Well, we have seen it.
Well, we have seen it.
August 29, 2020
Reading this at this time in history was apropos as the links between the way the Democrats ran Clinton's re-election campaign and how the Republicans have learned from that and gone next level is quite scary.... A brilliant snapshot in time and some great perspectives on people who don't get the attention these days for what they did in the lead up to 1996.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 79 reviews