The snowball by alice schroeder
The Snowball
Synopsis
The Snowball is the first and will be the only biography of the world’s richest man, Warren Buffett, written with his full cooperation and collaboration.
Combining a unique blend of “The Sage of Omaha’s” business savvy, life story and philosophy, The Snowball is essential reading for anyone wishing to discover and replicate the secrets of his business and life success.
Warren Buffett is arguably the world’s greatest investor. Even as a child he was fascinated by the concept of risk and probability, setting up his first business at the age of six. In he bought struggling Massachusetts textile firm Berkshire Hathaway and grew it to be the 12th largest corporation in the US purely through the exercise of sound investing principles - a feat never equalled in the annals of business.
Despite an estimated net worth of around US$62 billion, Buffett leads an intriguingly frugal life taking home a salary of only £50, a year. His only indulgence is a private jet, an extravagance he wryly acknowledges by calling it “The Indefensible”. In , he made the largest charitable donation on record, with most of it going to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The Snowball provides a comprehensive, richly detailed insight one of the world’s most extraordinary and much loved public figures.
The Snowball Quotes
“The Keoughs were wonderful neighbors,” he said. “It’s true that occasionally Don would mention that, unlike me, he had a job, but the relationship was terrific. One time my wife, Susie, went over and did the proverbial Midwestern bit of asking to borrow a cup of sugar, and Don’s wife, Mickie, gave her a whole sack. When I heard about that, I decided to go over to the Keoughs’ that night myself. I said to Don, ‘Why don’t you give me twenty-five thousand dollars for the partnership to invest?’ And the Keough family stiffened a little bit at that point, and I was rejected. “I came back sometime later and asked for the ten thousand dollars Clarke referred to and got a similar result. But I wasn’t proud. So I returned at a later time and asked for five thousand dollars. And at that point, I got rejected again. “So one night, in the summer of , I started heading over to the Keough house. I don’t know whether I would have dropped it to twenty-five hundred dollars or not, but by the time I got to the Keough household, the whole place was dark, silent. There wasn’t a thing to see. But I knew what was going on. I knew that Don and Mickie were hiding upstairs, so I didn’t leave. “I rang that doorbell. I knocked. Nothing happened. But Don and Mickie were upstairs, and it was pitch-black. “Too dark to read, and too early to go to sleep. And I remember that day as if it were yesterday. That was June twenty-first, “Clarke, when were you born?” “March twenty-first, ” “It’s little things like that that history turns on. So you should be glad they didn’t give me the ten thousand dollars.”
&#; Alice Schroeder, The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life
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The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life
Want a real bio of Warren Buffett? You'll have to keep waiting, because this book ain't it.
This baby's got some major boo-boos in just the first 50 pages. (But there's more later!) Add in overwriting, poor writing, and apparently economic slants or ax-grinding and ugg
First, the early errors:
1. She claims Hoover was Coolidge's VP. Nope, twas Charles Curtis.
2. She claims some other speech, not "Cross of Gold," was William Jennings Bryan's most famous. Not even close.
3. A possible whopper. On page 17, she describes the "notoriously fumble fingered Buffett" trying to "get up" a PowerPoint slide as if it were an actual slide Dunno if she believes that, but it halfway sounds that way.
And, as I said, that's just in the first FIFTY pages.
Biggest of the later errors?
Page , Schroeder says the Taoiseach is "head of state" of Ireland.
NOPE. Try "head of government," not "head of state." And, in a parliamentary government, that's a big difference.
She also appears to take some Dust Bowl yarns as truth.
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Economic ax-grinding? Claiming that going off the gold standard, specifically, Great Britain in , is just an "excuse to write bad checks."
So, Ms. Goldbug, you still carry non-gold-backed Federal Reserve Notes in your wallet? Vote for Ron Paul? Etc., etc.
Also speaking of writing back checks, in the midst of this economic meltdown, you didn't "fluff" any CDOs, CDSs, etc. at Morgan Stanley, did you? Afraid of having any bonuses capped by the "bad check writing" U.S. Govt?
She later repeats the oft-retold conservative myth, or lie, that the New Deal "didn't work." Wrong. Especially before FDR got balanced-budget cold feet, he cut unemployment in half during his first term.
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Over-writing?
When we have a footnote, a DUH footnote, telling us banks were more vulnerable to robberies during the Depression because they didn't have electronic security syst
The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life
First edition cover | |
| Author | Alice Schroeder |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Biography |
| Genre | Biography, business, investing |
| Publisher | Bantam Books |
Publication date | September 29, |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media&#;type | Print, e-book |
| Pages | pp. (hardcover) |
| ISBN | |
The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life (ISBN&#;) is a biography of Warren Buffett by Alice Schroeder.
History
Before this book was written, Warren Buffett rejected numerous approaches by biographers, journalists, and publishers to cooperate on an account of his life. After spending six years as the only Wall Streetanalyst Buffett would speak to, Alice Schroeder was approached by Buffett to write his biography. In , she left her job at Morgan Stanley and traveled to Omaha to work on the book full-time. Schroeder spent over 2, hours reading Buffett's personal files while interviewing Buffett, his wife, children, sisters, friends, and business associates. Before Schroeder began writing, Buffett told her he would not ask for any revisions once the book was finished and, where accounts of his life differed, to always use the "less flattering version."
Reception
The Snowball was 's best business and investing book of the year Time Magazine, People Magazine, and critic Janet Maslin of The New York Times named it one of ten best books of the year.The Washington Post, the Financial Times, BusinessWeek, and Publishers Weekly also each named The Snowball the best book of The book was shortlisted for the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award, as well as the Gerald Loeb Award for distinguished business journalism. A reviewer in The Economist noted that for those "hoping for detailed analyses of his investment record" the place