The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life
Ratings9
Average rating3.6
15
Ratings9
Average rating3.6
The personally revealing and complete biography of the man known everywhere as “The Oracle of Omaha”—for fans of the HBO documentary Becoming Warren Buffett 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. 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. Praise for The Snowball “Even people who don't care a whit about business will be intrigued by this portrait. . . . Schroeder, a former insurance-industry analyst, spent years interviewing Buffett, and the result is a side of the Oracle of Omaha that has rarely been seen.”—Time “Will mesmerize anyone interested in who Mr. Buffett is or how he got that way. The Snowball tells a fascinating story.”—New York Times “If the replication of any great achievement first requires knowledge of how it was done, then The Snowball, the most detailed glimpse inside Warren Buffett and his world that we likely will ever get, should become a Bible for capitalists.”—Washington Post “Riveting and encyclopedic.”—Wall Street Journal “A monumental biography . . . Schroeder got the best access yet of any Buffett biographer. . . . She deals out marvelously funny and poignant stories about Buffett and the conglomerate he runs, Berkshire Hathaway.”—Forbes “The most authoritative portrait of one of the most important American investors of our time.”—Los Angeles Times
Reviews with the most likes.
This is a epic book (6 months, but I got there!)...don't go reading it expecting to get a particularly deep insight into how Buffet went about becoming the richest man on Earth. But it's a good story and, assuming it's not massaging his image too much, then it's consoling that such a decent bloke could make it all the way to the top.
Abandoned at 35%. Went through from Warren's childhood through to his life in the early 1970s. This is a huge 800+ page book and unfortunately I'm not that interested in finance or Warren Buffet to want to read all of it.
Buffett gave the author the go-ahead to be brutally honest and it shows. The early pages don't paint a very flattering picture of him. He comes across like a manchild (if I'm being honest). He's very picky with his food, to the point where when he stays out of town at a friend's mum's place (and this is when he's an adult by the way) she cooks him hamburgers for breakfast (!) His wife was doing an amazing job of basically propping him up and allowing him to do the one thing he was good at. This singular focus on money though meant he wasn't really paying enough attention to his wife and kids.
Although he's super money-oriented he's also very concerned about what other people think of him and possibly some loyalty comes into play too. So he's not a complete dick to other people in his pursuit of money. e.g. he wouldn't fire an entire factory worth of people just to make a couple extra bucks. He also did (maybe grudgingly) let his wife spend some of his money, so he wasn't a completely stingy guy either.
Of course since I only got a third of the way in (and there are 40 more years of his life covered in the book, I'm assuming he did grow as a person and a lot more good points happened further on. e.g. he did force his town's country club to start allowing Jewish members.
