One of the Best Business Biographies Ever! This book has held my attention from the very first page. After I purchased it I saw the author on C-SPAN's weekend book program and was truly impressed with her. Mr. Buffett is one of a kind and I look forward to completing reading this book. The author has meticulously footnoted her writing - a first class job in writing.
Phenomenal Read An amazing read about Mr. Buffett. Well written and very interesting. Highly recommend for anyone interested in business... especially in these times of needed "value investing"."The not -simple man of simple tastes" Alice Schroeder condenses 820 pages into the wonderfully short, intriguing paragraph:
"Warren Buffett, the not -simple man of simple tastes, now had the simple life of the man that he had always believed himself to be. He had one wife, drove one car, occupied one house that hadn't been decorated in years, ran one business, and spent more and more time with his family."
I loved the biography ( ALL 838 pages ) & would have easily given it 5 stars, if it hadn't been for the sheer PHYSICAL weight of the tome.
Not recommended for dainty wrists!
A plodding tome...but it's WARREN BUFFETT!! I recommend the Roger Lowenstein biography over this one, mainly because it covers everything this one does but with a lot less pomp. I envy Alice Schroeder's endless hours firsthand with Warren, but it doesn't seem to have added very much to her book. The analogies, at best, fall flat on their face. She italicizes what he says like a Bible would the word of God. It irritates me and I'm practically an agnostic. She spends an entire chapter building up to something that could have taken a mere paragraph. I don't think she understands pacing very well, but her book is very easy to read and I did come away with cool new tidbits about Warren's childhood and adulthood habits, stories, relationships... If you start with Lowenstein, you'll be hard pressed to finish Schroeder. It just doesn't seem worth it. Finest insight into the man and his investments Alice has written a singularly remarkable book: for the first time we have a historical record of Buffett's career with his cooperation as well as the cooperation of those close to him. The book gives Buffett masterful treatment by placing his saga in its appropriate historical context. For students of the world's greatest investor, this is a godsend and adds tremendously to the existing literature. You'll get so much out of this that for the price of the book, you're being paid to read it.
One of the book's best features is the amount of detail it provides on many of Buffett's investments. From a bird's eye view (and from reading the existing histories as well as his letters to investors), you've heard that he bought Washington Post stock and that it turned into a multi-decade multi-bagger for Berkshire. Reality is a lot more complicated than that. Buffett created Kay Graham as an expert capital allocator and had hands-on (literally) involvement with the company. The same is true of GEICO. Buffett's greatest investments, therefore, have been those in which he has invested much more than just his capital.
We also learn that Buffett relied much more than previously thought on his network of friends, and encouraged them to "ride the coattails" of great investors (though not his). Whereas the American Express investment during the salad oil crisis had been explained very simplistically, here we learn that Buffett employed friends to dig up large piles of scuttlebutt and reports on the company before committing capital. And so it goes. Alice provides a very balanced, sometimes skeptical, look at Buffett's life. She's no pushover and holds her own by successfully treating her subject objectively (at least much more than I expected).
Buffett is the world's greatest simplifier: he lives by simple, crisp rules. And in the end, he notes that the purpose of life is to be loved by as many people as possible among those you want to have love you. If you take one lesson from this book, it's that there are two things that even a mountain of cash can't buy: a sterling reputation, and love.
Many anecdotes are poignant, others hilarious, and all are instructive and insightful. At various points I was laughing out loud. The world is much enriched by this history. Is it perfect? No, but neither could it be. Different readers will have different demands. Some won't care about the personal side, and wish the author had provided even more detail on the businesses and investments. But the personal side of this enigmatic personality is essential to an understanding of this puzzle of a man who has, without a doubt, the finest reputation and track record of any juggernaut businessman who ever lived.
If Roger Lowenstein's excellent "The Making of an American Capitalist" is the undergraduate course on Buffett, then this is the master's degree -- masterfully written, researched, thought out, and a valuable gift to Buffett aficionados, admirers, and students of life.
