Louisa Thomas

About

Louisa Thomas is a staff writer for the New Yorker. She is the author of Louisa: The Extraordinary Life of Mrs. Adams, a biography of the former First Lady Louisa Catherine Adams (1775-1852), and Conscience: Two Soldiers, Two Pacifists, One Family — A Test of Will and Faith in World War I, about her great-grandfather, Norman Thomas, and his three brothers. She is also the coauthor, with John Urschel, of Mind and Matter: A Life in Math and Football, and the co-editor, with Mary Pilon, of Losers: Dispatches from the Other Side of the Scoreboard. A former writer and editor for ESPN's Grantland, her writing has appeared in the New York Times, New York, Vogue, Racquet, several Best American Sports Writing anthologies, and other places. An avid runner, chess enthusiast, and tennis player, she lives outside of Boston with her husband and two small children.

Articles

A short list of articles and essays:

• Paul Skenes Is a Heroic Figure in Baseball’s Antiheroic Age (8/18/24)
• Élite Gymnasts Are Aging Up (6/30/24)
• Caitlin Clark’s New Reality (6/9/24)
• The Boston Celtics and What Greatness Looks Like (6/2/24)
• There Was a Model for Luka Dončić. Now He’s Broken It (5/5/24)
• How Women’s Basketball Became the Hottest Thing in College Sports (4/6/24)
• The Joy of Watching Mookie Betts Play Baseball (3/30/24)
• The Swagger of Caitlin Clark (2/17/24)
• How Nikola Jokić Became the World’s Best Basketball Player (2/5/24)
• The N.F.L.’s Rear Guard Is Angry About the “Tush Push” (10/28/23)
• Kelce-Swift Is a Dream Pairing for the N.F.L. (9/25/23)
• With Novak Djokovic, It Is Always a Struggle (9/11/23)
• The World Cup and the Frustrating, Inspiring State of Women’s Soccer (7/23/23)
• Daniel Bard Made an Improbable Comeback. Then He Had to Do It Again (6/12/23)
• The N.B.A.’s Supernova Era (3/27/23)
• How Grant Wahl Changed the Place of Soccer in America (12/17/22)
• Roger Federer's Generous Farwell (9/24/22)
• Getting Brittney Griner Home (9/11/22)
• Without Venus, There is No Serena (9/2/22)
• Hou Yifan and the Wait for Chess’s First Woman World Champion (7/26/22)
• The Trans Swimmer Who Won Too Much (3/17/22)
• The Chiefs’ Win Against the Bills Was Ridiculous and Perfect (1/24/22)
• Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokic, Basketball’s Best Buddy Comedy (9/26/20)
• The Fractured World of Tennis Amid a Prolonged Pandemic (8/13/20)
• The U.S. Soccer Team Is Still Fighting for Equal Treatment (5/4/20)
• What It Means to Miss Marathon Day in Boston (4/18/20)
• The Day the Games Stopped (3/12/20)
• Kobe Bryant was Basketball's Great Storyteller (1/26/20)
• The Stories that the Houston Astros Have Told (10/25/19)
• The NBA's Age of Anxiety (3/8/19)
• Michael Bennett's Political Football (12/10/18)
• Magnus Carlsen Won the Chess World Championship Again, but Something Has Changed (11/28/18)
• How Far Can Becky Hammon Go in the NBA? (4/9/18)
• Nick Kyrgios, the Reluctant Rising Star of Tennis (7/3/17)

For complete list of New Yorker articles, see the New Yorker Archive.
For complete list of Grantland articles, see the Grantland Archive.

Books

Louisa: The Extraordinary
Life of Mrs. Adams

About
Purchase

Conscience: Two Soldiers,
Two Pacifists, One Family
— A Test of Will and Faith
in World War I

About
Purchase

Mind and Matter: A Life
in Math and Football

About
Purchase

Losers: Dispatches from
the Other Side of the
Scoreboard

About
Purchase

Louisa

Born in London to an American father and a British mother on the eve of the Revolutionary War, Louisa Catherine Johnson was raised in circumstances very different from the New England upbringing of the future president John Quincy Adams, whose life had been dedicated to public service from the earliest age. And yet John Quincy fell in love with her, almost despite himself. Their often tempestuous but deeply close marriage lasted half a century. They lived in Prussia, Massachusetts, Washington, Russia, and England, at royal courts, on farms, in cities, and in the White House. Louisa saw more of Europe and America than nearly any other woman of her time. But wherever she lived, she was always pressing her nose against the glass, not quite sure whether she was looking in or out. The other members of the Adams family could take their identity for granted—they were Adamses; they were Americans—but she had to invent her own. The story of Louisa Catherine Adams is one of a woman who forged a sense of self. As the country her husband led found its place in the world, she found a voice. That voice resonates still.


Praise:

"It is a pleasure to read." -- New York Times Book Reivew

“For a long time I have been waiting for a biographer with sufficient style and emotional range to tell the quite extraordinary story of Louisa Catherine Adams in all its splendor and sadness. Louisa has been worth the wait.” —Joseph J. Ellis, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Quartet and First Family: Abigail and John Adams

“Louisa Thomas has written a beautiful, wise, and compelling book about a member of America’s Adams clan who may just be the most interesting Adams of them all. Rigorously researched and written with grace, conviction, and insight, Louisa is a marvelous achievement by a biographer from whom we shall be hearing for decades to come. For that in general and for this book in particular we should all be grateful indeed.”—Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winner and bestselling author of American Lion, Franklin and Winston, and Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

Conscience

Even before World War I, there was a sense that the country was changing. For the Thomas brothers, the struggle did not only take place on the battlefields. It was within themselves. Sons of a Presbyterian minister and grandsons of missionaries, the brothers shared a rigorous moral code, Princeton educations, and a faith in the era’s spirit of hope. Their upbringing prepared them for a life of service, but the war challenged their notions of citizenship, faith, and freedom and threatened to tear their family apart. Centered around the life of the oldest, Norman Thomas, Conscience tells the story of four brothers, and the choices they made Conscience moves from the gothic buildings of Princeton to the tenements of New York City, from the West Wing of the White House to a prison in Kansas and to the battlefields of France, tracking four young men navigating upheaval. In telling the story of their journeys, Thomas recovers a way of talking about personal liberty and social obligation, about being true to oneself and to one another.


Praise:

“Daring … The thrust of this enthralling book lies with its title: through the experience of her forebears, Thomas examines how conscience fares when society considers it subversive.” — The New York Times Book Review

Mind and Matter

A New York Times bestseller

For John Urschel, what began as an insatiable appetite for puzzles as a child developed into mastery of the elegant systems and rules of mathematics. But when he joined his high school football team, a new interest began to eclipse the thrill he felt in the classroom.Against the odds, Urschel found a way to manage his double life as a scholar and an athlete. While he was an offensive lineman for the Baltimore Ravens, he simultaneously pursued his PhD in mathematics at MIT. Weaving together two separate narratives, Urschel relives for us the most pivotal moments of his bifurcated life. Equally at home discussing Georg Cantor’s work on infinities and Bill Belichick’s playbook, Urschel reveals how each challenge—whether on the field or in the classroom—has brought him closer to understanding the two different halves of his own life, and how reason and emotion, the mind and the body, are always working together.


Praise:

“Captivating. ... Urschel’s brilliant memoir explores the challenges of making difficult choices and the rewards of following one’s passions in life.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

Losers

“It’s easy to do anything in victory. It’s in defeat that a man reveals himself.” —Floyd Patterson

Twenty-two notable writers—including Bob Sullivan, Abby Ellin, Mike Pesca, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Louisa Hall, and Gay Talese—examine the untold stories of the losers, and in doing so reveal something raw and significant about what it means to be human. As sports journalists Mary Pilon and Louisa Thomas argue, losing is not a phenomenon to be overlooked, and in Losers, they have called upon novelists, reporters, and athletes to consider what it means to lose. Losers turns the art of sports writing on its head and proves that there is inspiration to be found in stories of risk, resilience, and getting up after you’ve been knocked down.


Praise:

“If sports do in fact show us the best of the human spirit, that revelation lies not in championships and victory but in the cold morning of defeat. This book chronicles how human beings respond to failure, how they rise and try again, because that’s what living is. It is essential reading — and the self-examination it prompts is essential, too.”—Wright Thompson, author of The Cost of These Dreams

“Pilon and Thomas explore the significance losing and defeat has on the lives of athletes and fans in this thoughtful anthology. . . . A stirring tribute to losing, one of life’s greatest teachers.” —Publishers Weekly

Elements

i = 0;

while (!deck.isInOrder()) {
    print 'Iteration ' + i;
    deck.shuffle();
    i++;
}

print 'It took ' + i + ' iterations to sort the deck.';