Oracle of Omaha

October 5, 2008 - 10:23pm — Bibliofuture

The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life

Book review in the Washington Post:

Excerpt: "Manual labor is for the birds," Warren Buffett decided somewhere around the 8th grade. At this precocious age the Nebraska native had also already discovered his extraordinary facility with facts and figures, the very attribute that would transform a socially awkward misfit into "the Oracle of Omaha," the most successful investor of modern times, the world's richest man and most generous philanthropist. This quintessentially American tale about the ultimate self-made man -- and in some ways the least changed -- unfolds for the first time with Buffett's full cooperation in Alice Schroeder's gargantuan authorized biography, The Snowball.

Born in 1930 to a self-righteous Protestant stockbroker (who went on to serve four terms as a Republican U.S. congressman) and a verbally abusive mother who made him feel "worthless," Buffett divided his boyhood between Omaha and wartime Washington. He had no use for girls; instead his eyes leapt at statistics and money-making schemes. Young Buffett tabulated the numbers and letters on license plates; handicapped mortality rates; trolled discarded racetrack slips; sold used golf balls; delivered newspapers; rented pinball machines; ran numbers; printed betting sheets; shoplifted; and "Tom Sawyered" classmates into his ventures. At 14, he purchased a tenant farm and filed his first tax return; he was a millionaire at 30.