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|  | Author: Alice Schroeder
Publisher: Bantam
List Price: $35.00
Buy New: $4.98
as of 11/24/2009 22:21 CST details
You Save: $30.02 (86%)
New (66) Used (124) Collectible (27) from $4.98
Seller: _athenaeum_
Rating:  205 reviews
Sales Rank: 3105
Format: Deckle Edge
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1ST
Pages: 976
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.4
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6 x 2.2
ISBN: 0553805096
Dewey Decimal Number: 332.6092
EAN: 9780553805093
ASIN: 0553805096
Publication Date: September 29, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New! Buy with confidence - your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 201-205 of 205
 My theory on Buffett's golden touch September 30, 2008
Vadim Gurevich
3 out of 32 found this review helpful
I got it!
You know how one of the arguments against the possibility of time travel goes "time travel is not possible, because if it was, we would encounter time travelers from the future and we don't"? Well, Warren Buffett is a man who travelled from the future, only instead of Sports Almanach, he brought with him a book with historic share prices.
And, btw, this book is parallel to that biography movie that Marty sees in front of Biff's tower in ruined 1985...
ALICE IN BUFFETTLAND September 30, 2008
kevin oconnell (ny)
12 out of 51 found this review helpful
Alice Schroeder is an accountant more than a writer but this book and its pattern flow very well. Buffett selected her more for her financial thinking than anything else I suspect. Schroeder tries to tell it like it is. I imagine Buffett felt the heat on reading some of it. Read the footnotes too.
It is the story of someone who got in the groove of making money and stayed there 24/7. The pull of the story is to see the interactions between Buffett and his relatives and other people. It is a very candid book.
WEB is a real hero by the end of the book. Maybe he became one as he got older. So it seems. Alice is egging him on to go from hero to sainthood at the end of the book. However, books about people are like icebergs, you only see the little bit above the surface. Good job Alice.
Buy the book at a bargain price.
I hear that when Charlie Munger wanted to read this book he tried to borrow it from the library. However, it was out on loan to Warren Buffett at the time.
Valuable Insight into an Enigma! September 29, 2008
Loyd E. Eskildson (Phoenix, AZ.)
116 out of 148 found this review helpful
The title of this book refers to Buffett's likening life to a snowball - "the important thing is to find wet snow and a really long hill." Buffett certainly has had that effect with money.
"The Snowball" begins with a Buffett presentation to an elite 1999 group at Sun Valley, suggesting in a humorous manner that the ".com" frenzy was no more than a bubble. Then, its on to learning why his associate Charles Munger (an inseparable partner since 1959) is both the opposite and highly similar to Buffett.
Warren Buffett, we learn comes from a heritage of very thrifty small business owners. His parents initially struggled through the Great Depression, carried initially by grandfather's letting the food bill run at his grocery store, then by the success of his newly opened stock brokerage that focused on conservative investments. Unfortunately, his mother was somewhat unbalanced, directing frequent tirades at Warren and his sister, creating a lifelong need for the approval of women. Calculating the comparative life spans of religious song writers while in church led Warren towards religious skepticism at an early age.
Armed with his father's nostrums and examples, his early business experiences (selling gum, pop, magazines, refurbished golf balls, delivering papers) and stock investment (sold too early, losing most of his potential profit), learning that he didn't like physical work (helping his father and grandfather), an early meeting with the head of Goldman Sachs (Buffett just pumped $5 billion into the firm), and knowledge from Benjamin Graham at Columbia Business School (Harvard turned him down), he went on to become the richest man in the world (had $5,000 by the time he finished high school - equivalent to $53,000 today) in a series of interesting stories within "The Snowball."
Buffett learned a number of important lessons en route to becoming the richest man in the world. 1)Commitments are so sacred that they should be rare; allies are important; grandstanding rarely gets anything done. 2)Customer loyalty is valuable (bought a gas station across from one with established clientele - never did well). 3)GEICO had a sustainable competitive model - lowest costs, protected by limiting clientele to government workers (more likely to be responsible), ability to invest funds prior to use. 4)Looking at management, ability to maintain sales growth (Charlie Munger) are important in addition to financial data emphasis (Benjamin Graham). (This was an important change because the number of statistical bargains had shrunk to virtually nil and tended to be small companies which did not work when large sums of money were involved.) 5)Public often overreacted - eg. American Express hit by Kennedy Assassination + DeAngelis soybean scandal at same time = good opportunity. 6)Diversification was not a good thing, as long as investment analysis had a high probability of correctness and low probability of drastic change. 7)Corollary of #6 was ruling out investing in complex technology or human problems (eg. strike, layoffs, plant closings).
A Lesson Not To Be Missed in Difficult Times September 29, 2008
Ford Ka (Edinburgh, Scotland)
19 out of 27 found this review helpful
Warren Buffett is one of the most important and successful people in the business world. His life is a story of success - not a single lucky hit but a career going from one victory to another. One would be very irrational to miss an opportunity to have a glimpse of what made him the person he is and what made his success so huge. This book offers more then just a glimpse - it is a full scale portrait of the man.
Alice Schroeder has done a marvelous job putting together this biography - it is insightful and thought-provoking. People pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for the honour of lunching with Buffett - you can get to know him (inasmuch as he was ready to reveal himself, obviously) for much less so why not give it a try?
Awesom September 29, 2008
Clayton Williams
28 out of 42 found this review helpful
I've been up all morning/night reading this book. It is probably one of the best books ever written. I like how Alice shows every side of Warren Buffet- and Warren Buffet allows her to embrace his human side- which just goes to further show his genius. Alice has completed a feat that probably makes her one of the top biographers in the world and eligible of any award. What she has done is nearly as impressive as what Warren has done.
Clayton Williams
18 Yrs Old
Showing reviews 201-205 of 205
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