Columnist and financial thriller writer Michael M. Thomas died August 7 at 85. The NYT notes that he “wrote chiefly about money and how people got it, what they did with it and what it did to them — people he dismissed as ‘social climbers, stock market papermongers, real estate shills and assorted other virtuosos of hype and blather’.” Graydon Carter told the Times, “Michael came from money, and he made money. As a result, he could write about people who came from money and made money like a modern-day Trollope.”