Sebastian Mallaby

Sebastian Mallaby is a British journalist and author whose work joins biography, financial history and institutional reporting. Educated in modern history at Oxford, he spent thirteen years at The Economist, reporting from Africa and Japan and later leading its Washington bureau. He subsequently served as a columnist and editorial board member at The Washington Post. He is the Paul A. Volcker Senior Fellow for International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Mallaby writes about the people and organizations that shape markets, public policy and technological change. His books move between close portraits and broad histories: The World’s Banker examines James Wolfensohn’s World Bank; More Money Than God traces the rise of hedge funds; and The Power Law follows the venture-capital industry from early Silicon Valley to its global expansion. The Infinity Machine turns to Demis Hassabis, DeepMind and the pursuit of advanced artificial intelligence.

The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan won the 2016 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award and the 2017 George S. Eccles Prize in Economic Writing. Mallaby has also twice been a Pulitzer Prize finalist for editorial writing at The Washington Post.

For a first book, choose The Man Who Knew. Its account of Greenspan’s path from economic consultant and Ayn Rand associate to Federal Reserve chairman shows Mallaby’s central strength: making monetary policy, political calculation and institutional power part of one sustained human story.