The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of LifeShortlisted for the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Prize 2008 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. 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 1964 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 £50,000 a year. His only indulgence is a private jet, an extravagance he wryly acknowledges by calling it "The Indefensible". In 2006, 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. |
Contents
The Less Flattering Version | |
Sun Valley | |
Creatures of Habit 4 Warren Whats Wrong? 5 The Urge to Preach PART ONE The Bubble | |
PART TWO The Inner Scorecard | |
The Bathtub Steeplechase | |
Armistice | |
A Thousand Ways | |
Inky Fingers | |
The Sun 36 Two Drowned Rats 37 Newshound | |
Spaghetti Western | |
The Giant | |
How Not to Run a Public Library | |
And Then What? | |
Blue Ribbon | |
PART FIVE The King of Wall Street | |
Pharaoh | |
True Crime Stories | |
Pudgy She Was | |
Silent Sales | |
The Rules of the Racetrack | |
The Elephant | |
The Interview | |
Strike | |
Mount Everest | |
Miss Nebraska | |
Stage Fright | |
GrahamNewman | |
The Side to Play | |
Hidden Splendor | |
The Omaha Club | |
The Locomotive | |
The Windmill | |
Haystacks of Gold | |
Folly | |
Dry Tinder | |
What a Worsted | |
Jet Jack | |
The Scaffold Sways the Future | |
Easy Safe Profitable and Pleasant | |
The Unwinding | |
PART FOUR Susie Sings | |
Candy Harry | |
Rose | |
Call the Tow Truck | |
Rubicon | |
White Nights | |
ThumbSucking and Its HollowCheeked Result | |
The Angry Gods | |
The Lottery | |
To Hell with the Bear | |
Chickenfeed | |
The Genie | |
Semicolon | |
The Last Kay Party | |
By the Rich for the Rich | |
Oracle | |
Buffetted | |
Winter | |
Frozen Coke | |
The Seventh Fire | |
Claim Checks | |
The Crisis | |
The Snowball PART SIX Claim Checks | |
Notes | |
A Personal Note About Research | |
Photo Credits and Permissions | |
Acknowledgments | |