| The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life | 
 enlarge | Author: Alice Schroeder
Publisher: Bantam
Category: Book
List Price: $35.00
Buy New: $15.96
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Avg. Customer Rating:  97 reviews
Sales Rank: 23
Format: Roughcut
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 976
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.7
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.7 x 2.2
ISBN: 0553805096
Dewey Decimal Number: 332.6092
EAN: 9780553805093
ASIN: 0553805096
Publication Date: September 29, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Here is THE book recounting the life and times of one of the most respected men in the world, Warren Buffett. The legendary Omaha investor has never written a memoir, but now he has allowed one writer, Alice Schroeder, unprecedented access to explore directly with him and with those closest to him his work, opinions, struggles, triumphs, follies, and wisdom. The result is the personally revealing and complete biography of the man known everywhere as “The Oracle of Omaha.”
Although the media track him constantly, Buffett himself has never told his full life story. His reality is private, especially by celebrity standards. Indeed, while the homespun persona that the public sees is true as far as it goes, it goes only so far. Warren Buffett is an array of paradoxes. He set out to prove that nice guys can finish first. Over the years he treated his investors as partners, acted as their steward, and championed honesty as an investor, CEO, board member, essayist, and speaker. At the same time he became the world’s richest man, all from the modest Omaha headquarters of his company Berkshire Hathaway. None of this fits the term “simple.”
When Alice Schroeder met Warren Buffett she was an insurance industry analyst and a gifted writer known for her keen perception and business acumen. Her writings on finance impressed him, and as she came to know him she realized that while much had been written on the subject of his investing style, no one had moved beyond that to explore his larger philosophy, which is bound up in a complex personality and the details of his life. Out of this came his decision to cooperate with her on the book about himself that he would never write.
Never before has Buffett spent countless hours responding to a writer’s questions, talking, giving complete access to his wife, children, friends, and business associates—opening his files, recalling his childhood. It was an act of courage, as The Snowball makes immensely clear. Being human, his own life, like most lives, has been a mix of strengths and frailties. Yet notable though his wealth may be, Buffett’s legacy will not be his ranking on the scorecard of wealth; it will be his principles and ideas that have enriched people’s lives. This book tells you why Warren Buffett is the most fascinating American success story of our time.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 92 more reviews...
 Lowenstein's book is better December 1, 2008
Am a buffett fan.
This is a good book but I found the Roger Lowenstein book far better than this one. If you dont read snowball, you wont miss much of Buffett!
 Too thick! December 1, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
I didn't expect it is such a thick book. It will take me forever to read it.
 Feet of Clay November 30, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Alice Schroeder has accomplished an impressive feat. The poor lady must have spent many hours at Gorat's watching Buffett devour his strict Colon Cancer diet. This beautifully written 940 page biography reveals aspects of the Buffett personality which alternately shocked and repelled me. For example, I had no idea that Buffett the teenager was an habitual shoplifter. If I had known this many years ago I might never have started collecting Berkshire shares.
His emotional neglect of his son Howie caused Howie to act up in order to gain his father's attention. Buffett gave neither money nor his personal time to his children. He spent his hours in his study and the children effectively had no father. It was as if he regarded them as a costly overhead expense that he tolerated to please his wife. Years later, when Howie ran for public office, Buffett refused to donate to his son's campaign.
Although he could be tough, heartless and greedy where money was concerned, he was a complete wuss in interpersonal relationships. His mother's criticisms of him as a child made him weep and he was terrified of her even as an adult. One wonders if his uncontrolled greed for cash was his way of building a moat around himself that his mother could not breach.
As his fame grew, he started spending time with his Yiddish princess, Kay. He stayed in her many luxurious residences while his wife lived alone in their small Omaha home now bereft of children. Naturally Susie, his wife, found this to be a lonely life and she started to look around for something to fill in the hours. She sang professionally and gave generously of her time to acquaintances who were needy. She is the true heroine of this book. Her generosity and innate goodness contrast sharply with the shallow greediness of the husband she was pressured into marrying. When Susie, on several occasions, had to enter hospital Buffett refused each time to visit his wife. Apparently the Miser of Omaha is terrified of hospitals and doctors. When his friend Kay lay near death it was his daughter Susie Jr who, after much effort, persuaded him to visit the bedside of his dying friend.
His entire life is based on the dictum: take but never give. The time eventually came when his wife Susie had had enough. She moved out to San Francisco and started enjoying herself. Buffett wept for days when he realized that his wife had left him. He begged her to return but to no avail. Susie asked a friend to look in on him & to cook him an occasional meal. Eventually the friend moved into the house. Buffett, the book clearly shows, is always on the lookout for a 'mommy' - a female who will shelter him, coddle him and make him feel 'safe'. He knows several such persons.
It wasn't until Susie died that Buffett started to have a real relationship with his children. He stopped regarding them as unnecessary expenses but started relating to them & giving them his time & his love which he had always denied them in childhood. He became aware of their feelings rather than being totally preoccupied with his own. He started to consider his children as being important in his life. For the first time he took an interest in what they were doing. His son Howie missed his father's companionship during his childhood very much. He appeared to ignore his son Peter pretty well completely until he became an adult. After Susie died, Buffett started to give Peter some attention and to treat him as a human being. The author says that Howie had yearned for a
close connection to his father all his life & had never received it. Howie & his wife moved to Omaha so that he could be near his father.
Buffett has now started giving his children big checks on their birthdays which he had never done before. He is trying to buy their love after depriving them of the most precious gift he could have given them in childhood - his personal time and personal attention.
The book describes how Buffett showed a real coldness to the adopted daughters of his son Peter. He told Peter they would receive nothing in his will. He wrote a cruel letter to Nicole Buffett, his son Peter's adopted daughter. The book doesn't really explain the meanness that Buffett displayed toward this girl.
The book errs in one respect. The author did not get it quite right about the issuance of Class "B" shares. They were issued because Katz, a Philadelphia mayoral candidate, was going to subdivide the "A" shares & issue a "B" share of his own. Buffett had Charlie Munster call Katz and try to bully him into withdrawing his plan but Katz would not budge. So Buffett, much against his wishes, had to bring out the "B" shares himself.
The book describes his difficulty in understanding and using computers which clearly shows that his success is not due to his IQ but rather to his phenomenal memory. His ability to remember countless past business scenarios and their outcomes allows him to make good business decisions.
As this marvelous book nears the end, it makes clear that it is so difficult & painful for Buffett to give away money, or bottle caps, or golf balls that he passed the job to the Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation is actively supporting planetary overpopulation by distributing the money to Africa and the Africans, rather than returning it to the American citizens who made it possible for Buffett and Gates to accumulate this money in the first place.
Buffett has passed up an opportunity to be truly creative with his wealth. One can only wonder at the incredible advances in medicine that could be made if a large amount of this money were devoted to stem cell research. By giving it away Buffett looks ridiculous. After working all his life to accumulate something and then discarding it we must conclude he worked all his life for nothing. Unlike Andrew Carnegie, he leaves nothing behind for which he would be remembered. He will be quickly forgotten.
Some years after his wife Susie died, Buffett married his companion changing her status from a lowly live-in servant girl to a wife. One wonders if she had to sign a Pre-Nup.
Great read. November 30, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The size was quite daunting, however this book really delivers. Ms. Schroeder obviously loves narrative and she does a great job making Buffett, a man who has been written about countless times, new and exciting.
Very good read.
Lacks Some Cohesion November 28, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book offers insights into the personal life of Warren Buffett and how his relationships with others (his mother, wife, children, Katherine Graham, Charlie Munger, Gates, et al) cultivated his world view. You see a glimpse of a man driven as much by insecurities as by greed. On the business side, the book is at its best when it describes the early search for value investments and the crisis involving Salomon Brothers in the early 90's. But the book wastes time with many tales that are all too familiar (the annual shareholder meetings, Mrs. B, computer bridge, internet bubble scoldings), and then leaves the reader wondering about such things as the addition of B shares, the irony of being an avid Pepsi drinker until he found Coke as an investment, and the insurance business underwriting of Ajit Jain.
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