The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life
by Alice Schroeder
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Book Summary Information
Author: Alice SchroederEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-10-27
ISBN: 0553384619
Number of pages: 832
Publisher: Bantam
Book Reviews of The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life
Book Review: Take Time to Read This Book
Summary: 5 Stars
Alice Schroeder, Buffett's authorized biographer, does a stellar job of revealing the man without exposing him. She covers him in detail, faults and all, without sacrificing her deep respect for him. She captures the tycoon's life from before he was born up to mid-2008, when he found himself shuffling, much to his own surprise, through stacks of undervalued bonds. Things change around Buffett, but his themes--picking extraordinary values, teaching, utter absorption in his work, and paradoxical variety of character traits--remain the same.
Style
Like Buffett himself, the book doesn't entertain slouches. Schroeder does a fine job of idiot-proofing some of the more elaborate concepts in the book, such as derivatives, but the 800-odd page tome is rather large to swallow in a byte-sized world.
The author's style is graceful and respectful. It is alternately informative and intimate. At times, it appears as though Buffett himself wrote parts; during other chapters, Schroeder the journalist comes out, favoring facts over poetry. The stylistic fluctuations are minor, however, and they work well.
If there are flaws in the book, they have to do more with the details than the overall story. For example, the author mentions Carnegizing quite a few times before finally explaining it to the reader on page 500. It would have helped to clarify that earlier. Also, Schroeder's fine attention to detail sometimes borders on irrelevant, until you progress and realize that even the more obscure tidbits--Buffett's first wife Susie's childhood illnesses come to mind--do either provide depth to characters or bear on their future development. That's a sign of good editing, something that endures throughout the book.
The book hooks readers with an intimate portrait of Buffett in his office, then a description of Herbert Allen's exclusive high-roller event in Sun Valley, Idaho, which introduces readers not only to the caliber of Buffett's peers, but gives a glimpse into a world rarely uncovered by outsiders. After that, the book flows more or less in chronological order, from a biography of Warren's parents all the way through to mid-2008.
Financial Lessons
Schroeder doesn't teach you how to invest, but she does give readers a sweeping tour of American financial history through Mr. Buffett's life, facilitating a sharper understanding of the US investing landscape before this past year's dramatic fallout.
Warren Buffet was something of a child investing prodigy who has spent his lifetime building on his substantial natural skills. At the age of 10, he knew more about investing than the average American. He was a seasoned businessman and property owner by the age of 15. He can do his income taxes in his head.
Buffett's childhood ventures into finance, which included forays to the racetrack and his father's brokerage firm, offer an opportunity to see finance from a bright child's eyes, then from a brilliant young man's--Buffett's time at Columbia with Benjamin Graham, his forays into Wall Street, and his eventual migration away from that "abhorrent culture"--then from an ever-maturing tycoon's perspective. The aggregate result is a pleasing and insightful storyline of the discipline (finance) through the man (Buffett).
Snowball's glimpses into the world of financial moving and shaking offer pleasing insights for anyone interested in finance in general. Schroeder weaves in an array of classic quotes, including:
Debt is no good
Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful
Uncertainty is a friend of the buyer of long-term values
You pay a very high price in the stock market for a cheery consensus
In addition, Schroeder's coverage of certain significant events in American financial history offer pleasing insights to students of the overall discipline. Her play-by-play of the 1991-92 Solomon Brothers Crisis especially stands out.
The Man
Warren Buffett is brilliant, passionate, hardworking, persistent, and notoriously absorbed in his craft. Was he always like that? Snowball, in a word, says yes. But Buffett wasn't only born, he was also made, shaped by a dysfunctional mother and regimented, idealistic father, a childhood exposed to politics, markets, and voluntary parsimony, and a natural shyness that drew him not towards people, but numbers, order, and control.
Schroeder explores Buffett's key character traits while respectfully highlighting his paradoxes as well. Buffett's investment style is coldly rational, but Buffett the teacher is folksy and accessible. He won't eat anything "a three-year-old doesn't eat," but doesn't hesitate to feast at elite socialite dinners. The man's complexity ensures that readers can recognize, but not pigeonhole him. The truth is that all of his characteristics, no matter how much at odds they are with one another, are the real Warren Buffett.
Insight into America
Another facet adding value to the book is its coverage of modern American financial history. From the Depression to World War II to Vietnam to the shaky post-9/11 decade, Snowball touches upon eras in intermediate but informative depth. This makes it accessible to readers of all generations.
The book offers pleasing insights related to America's business elite. Warren Buffett, over the course of his life, was either intimately or remotely connected to a number of business tycoons, including the Annenberg family, furniture
dynamo Rose Blumkin, Washington Post chief Kay Graham, and Bill Gates and his family. Snowball maintains focus on its subject while looping in fascinating details about family members, friends, and peripheral characters.
Read It!
Even if you're not a Buffett connoisseur or even fan, Snowball is the tome to pick up for 2008. No business book has been more far-reaching, revealing, and comprehensive. This thick, entertaining masterpiece will doubtless add value to your memory banks.
(Review by Drea Knufken)
Summary of The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life
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.
From the Hardcover edition.
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