Snowball Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder First Edition Hardcover – January 1, 2011

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 aclose 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.

Warren Buffett authorized Alice Schroeder, a former insurance analyst with Paine Webber, to pen his biography. He told her if there are 2 versions of a story, use the "less flattering version". This tidbit demonstrates how humble the greatest investor in history is. This book is 838 pages excluding notes. I read this book carefully and I will be reading it again. I admire Buffett. I bought my first BRK share in 1997 and its share price dropped 40% recently and fell below liquidation value. I bought a few more. BRK is my single largest holding, accounting for a third of my portfolio. If the price drops more, I will buy more.The title Snowball refers to the power of compounding (snowflakes become snowballs). Buffett compounded businesses. He began to sell products (chewing gum) at age 6 years. He always had a fascination with numbers and money. He was a precocious child, very intelligent, good in math. By age 10 he visited Wall Street and developed an interest in stocks. Bought stocks shortly afterwards. By the time he was 16, he was worth $5000 (in today's dollars that would amount to $53,000).He was born to intelligent parents who afforded him a good education. He states he won the "ovarian lottery". Had he been born in Bangladesh, for example, to a poor family, his skills in capital allocation would have been useless. As such, he states he was very lucky to be born in the USA. His father was a libertarian Republican congressman whom Buffett admired greatly and mourned his death. He was not close to his verbally abusive mother. Buffett himself is a well known liberal democrat and talks about the need for higher income and capital gains taxes. He says he is a democrat because of the party's stance on civil and reproductive rights. Buffett is an atheist. He has contributed to the democratic party, family planning and "nuke free" organizations.Interestingly, Buffett wanted to attend Harvard but was rejected. He was accepted into Columbia where he fell under the sway of Graham and Dodd. He recommends Grahams' book Intelligent Investor. (He recently gave an interview asking investors to pay particular attention to chapters 8 and 20). He married Susan Thompson, the daughter of a prominent local physician. Susie bore him 3 children. Buffett was distant to his kids, he was busy and focused in his work of compounding money. He adored his wife but she became burned out caring for Buffett that later in life she moved to San Francisco and set up a waitress named Astrid Menks to care for Buffett. After Susie died a few years ago, Buffett married Astrid. Susie, with Warren's blessing, was a social activist. She was very engaged in the civil and gay rights movements. After Susie died, he became very close to his kids.Buffett befriended Kay Graham, the owner of Washington Post Co. Kay was famous for her Washington DC parties. Buffett the country bumpkin from Nebraska, met many famous people at these parties which he called elephant bumping. After initial reticence, he found that he enjoyed elephant bumping very much.Berkshire Hathaway was a textile mill that Buffett bought. It did not make any money, it was a losing business. Buffett sold it many years later but kept the name. He partnered with Charlie Munger and began to acquire more businesses. Their business dealings became so complex that they were investigated by the SEC in 1975. This caused Buffett a lot of lost sleep and anxious moments. The SEC commissioner, Stan Sporkin concluded that Buffett and Munger mistepped, but were not crooks. They got a gentle tap on the wrist. The incident caused Buffett and Munger to simplify their partnership.Another anxious moment for Buffett and Munger was acquiring a stake in Salomon Brothers which became involved in a scandal in buying Treasury bonds. One rogue trader caused so much trouble. Buffett took over as chairman and worked with the federal regulators and paid a massive fine and returned Salomon to health and sold it off. One of the players in this incident was John Merriweather, who later left and founded Long Term Capital Management. In 1999, LTCM nearly imploded and risked causing a global financial meltdown. Buffett offered to buy LTCM only if Merriweather left. Buffett guarded his reputation zealously and Merriweather was considered tainted. The feds, led by Alan Greenspan, saved LTCM, creating a moral hazard. We are still paying the price today because the feds are intervening everywhere these days. Had Buffett taken over LTCM, there would have been no moral hazard.Buffett said he made a mistake in investing in US Air. But he bought Net Jets and liked it so much even though it is not making much money. His purchase of General Re took years to pay off. He warned about derivatives long before they became toxic. He cleaned out bad management at Gen Re. His purchase of a utility company caused consternation at the time but with the recent alternative energy boom, his purchase now appears to be a stroke of genius.He has now created a wonderful collection of businesses that will long outlast him at least by a generation. Like JP Morgan, John Rockefeller, and Sam Walton, Buffett's BRK will live on long after his death. Buffett is giving away his billions to the Gates Foundation. He is giving his children enough money but not too much. As Buffett says, his death with be a "buying opportunity".

In this day and age, you would have to be a hermit to have not heard of Warren Buffet.Anyone in the field of investing, or personal development will be naturally drawn to this book, as I was. But it is also a fine story of life in business and in the public eye from the Great Depression to the 2008/9 Global financial meltdown, which will appeal to everybody. Warren’s personal life and philosophy is examined in just as much detail as his business life.I was initially taken aback by the size of this tome and wondered whether, or not I would have the stamina to get through it. I needn’t have worried though. It drew me in from the very first chapter and throughout the book I often found myself laughing out loud and insisting on reading segments of it back to my (very patient) partner.

It is a long read, the author is clearly intelligent, some clever words used. it jumps sections of Warrens life, i like his childhood the best,overall it seems warren makes money for the thrill and challenge of it to see if he is clever enough to beat the market.he doesnt invest so he can spend it.its not a book about how to invest it is more a cse of warren came froma middle classs background with a stockbroker father, in which he had no debt, lived at home or college for years, saved and saved and started as a broker, so made his money via a cut as all fund managers do.but he wanted to pick stocks and businesses, not just place them into folks portfolios for them.he had heartache in his life, deaths , seperation and his kids never really seen him as a suportive dad, nor did his wife see him as a manly husband, they thought in todays analysis, he had OCD when it coems to saving, scrimping and making money.nothing else mattered, he neglected his family and gave them money to make up for it imo.

I found this to be a page turner and thus give it 5 stars and recommend it.I felt as though I got to know him on some level although I feel that the book, like Buffett himself, only gives some things away. A more incisive look into his mind and actions would have been preferred but maybe that's not possible with him.There are far too many pages concerning other people that could have been cut. I suspect this was a requirement of his to pay homage to certain important people in his life. Still, it wasn't too much of a distraction.

This is an excellent, detailed study of a very interesting character, although it gets side tracked regularly with too much time spent justifying the missus through attempts to touch on her questionable behaviour without details and then ooze about her sparkling, sainted personality in case Warren gets upset. Should have just avoided the contradiction and concentrated on Warren and his business. It would have saved about a third of the length.

This is the first book if this type that I have attempted to read and must admit I enjoyed it a lot. At 700 pages long, it does not feel like a drag learning about his incredible work ethic from such a young age, all the way to his 80th birthday.Learnt the overall basics of stocks and investments through this book although this was not the desired purpose of this book, which is to learn about the Oracle of Omaha himself Warren Buffett, and what makes him tick.Would read it again in a few years time, a great read well written by Alice Schroeder.