His books, which combine historical photographs with his own writing, include Wisconsin Death Trip (1973), Bearing Witness: A Photographic Chronicle of American Life (1982), Visible Light (1985), Murder City: The Bloody History of Chicago in the Twenties (2007), and Repast: Dining Out at the Dawn of the New American Century with Lisa Stoffer (2013).
The book inspired a number of musical works, including the opera Black River by Conrad Susa, which was composed in 1975 and revised 1981; the "dramatic cantata" Songs of Madness and Sorrow by Daron Hagen, composed in 1996, a song by the Bethel, Maine-based thrash metal band Theory of Negativity on their 1994 self-titled album; and the 1999 album Wisconsin Death Trip by the band Static-X.
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In commentary on the two-disc DVD release of the Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There, director Todd Haynes said that much of the imagery for the town of Riddle in the Richard Gere segment of the film was inspired by Lesy's book.
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The Australian author Rod Jones cites Wisconsin Death Trip as an inspiration for his novel Billy Sunday, and the American author Robert Goolrick also cites it as an inspiration for his novel A Reliable Wife. Stephen King's book of novellas, Full Dark, No Stars, cites Wisconsin Death Trip as the inspiration for the story 1922.
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Wisconsin Death Trip is a 1973 non-fiction book by Michael Lesy, based on a collection of late 19th century photographs by Jackson County, Wisconsin photographer Charles Van Schaick – mostly taken in the city of Black River Falls – and local news reports from the same period.
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Black River Falls is the focus of Michael Lesy's book Wisconsin Death Trip (1973), which used photographs and newspaper cuttings to highlight the harshness of life in the community during the late nineteenth century and the effects it had on the psychology of the inhabitants.