Roger Lowenstein

Roger Lowenstein worked as a Wall Street Journal reporter and columnist before writing "Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist" (1995), which became the definitive early biography of Warren Buffett. His 2000 book "When Genius Failed" documented the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management with granular detail and became required reading for risk managers. He also wrote "Origins of the Crash" (dot-com bust) and "The End of Wall Street" (2008 crisis). Lowenstein brings rigorous financial analysis to narrative nonfiction, making complex events accessible to general readers. His LTCM account remains the most complete narrative reconstruction of how a firm staffed with two Nobel laureates and some of the most sophisticated quantitative models in finance at the time could fail catastrophically due to excessive leverage and liquidity risk concentration — a case study used in risk management curricula at business schools globally. His broader body of work demonstrates how financial crises share common structural features despite their apparent uniqueness on the surface.