To me, the man is a marvel of knowledge and industriousness.
Yep. Agreed. He's there to drive visits to Bloomberg, but I know what you mean, and that is indeed part of what makes him good.
As a layman and small-time investor, I like his stuff simply because he makes me aware of things I would almost certainly never encounter were it not for him. He seems to like explaining things just to be explaining them, and I like reading or listening to folks who share their fascination and insight into how their field works. I have an almost physical revulsion for dismissive people who seem never to be intrigued or surprised by anything -- those folks to whom everything wonderful is simply to be dismissed with a halfhearted wave of the hand accompanied by a yawn, sneer, or a subtle roll of the eyes. Levine's content seems so different from the usual slop about how the economy is going to do this or that, and consequently, why you should buy this or that.
It's an incredibly rare skill to be able to inform and entertain both professionals and lay audiences with the same piece in a field as technical as Levine's in as much depth as he goes into though, and it takes a certain amount of flair and skill to be opinionated on contested stuff without alienating much of your potential audience too.
Well said.
That is basically averaging 10 books a year for 43 years to get to that kind numbers . He probably wrote more during his peak years
He had to do it all of it on a typewriter, it takes more effort both physically and also mentally as there is no backspace you have think more carefully or you would have lot of corrections and retyping pages.
However all that apart typing without backspace is very different. Try it sometime , you have think ahead a bit form your sentence /block fully , it is harder , I think it will always be slower but maybe for someone used to that it is different.