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Whether he was watching head-butting contests in the basement of a of 1950s Brooklyn tenement, picking up laundry in a former Nazi concentration camp as a Jewish-American soldier, or navigating the Kafkaesque hearing room where the city of Boston relegates challenges to parking tickets, Michael Silverstein's peculiar life was filled with unexpected turns, and unlikely (but irresistible) humor. Mike was a man who lived in a (literal) windmill in Spain, and tilted at (metaphorical) windmills everywhere else. He cleaned toilets for the Queen of England's secretary, and was a featured speaker at a $15,000 a plate Clinton-Gore fundraiser (only to be banned from future events for insulting their biggest donor). He was an original thinker - one of the first people to see the possibilities for solar energy, and the economic opportunities in sustainable green business. But, he was also a compulsive truth-teller with a pathological aversion to personal success, who would promote ideas until others picked them up. Then, he would move on to something else before he could get any personal credit for them, making sure to publicly insult powerful people in the process. But, to everyone's surprise - especially his own - he left a lasting legacy of small victories against the forces of corruption and cynicism, and earning the love of those who knew his odd mix of gentle caring, wry humor, and skeptical but optimistic worldview.

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The late Michael Silverstein was probably the only person who ever coveted the title America's Best-Loved Financial Poet. But, if he thought like other people, we wouldn't have had the joy of reading his unique, insightful, humorous voice. Only a man who combined knowledge and vision with a pathological fear of personal success would be regularly featured as a financial analyst in the New York Times at the same time that he was paying his bills by delivering the New York Times. Only a business writer with the soul of a poet would organize the largest investors' show in New England not to make money, but as a work of performance art. During his varied career, Mike Silverstein served as a Senior Editor for Bloomberg News, and wrote a dozen books, serious and comic, fiction and non-fiction, in poetry and prose, on a variety of subjects ranging from politics, to the financial derivatives market, to the environment, to solar energy, to parking ticketing. His work includes three comic novels and one alternative history novel. Hundreds of his articles and Op Ed pieces have appeared in publications such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Atlanta Constitution, and Christian Science Monitor. He was a columnist for the Los Angeles Times and Boston Phoenix, and a regular commentator on National Public Radio. Favorable reviews of his writing appeared in media such as The New York Post, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Philadelphia Inquirer and others. He passed away at the age of 75 on September 27, 2016.

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