|
|
The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life (Hardcover)
by Alice Schroeder
| Category:
Biography, Value investing, Stock investing, Financial market |
| Market price: ¥ 330.00
MSL price:
¥ 288.00
[ Shop incentives ]
|
| Stock:
In Stock |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
This book becomes an instant bestseller even before its release on September 29, 2009. |
| If you want us to help you with the right titles you're looking for, or to make reading recommendations based on your needs, please contact our consultants. |
Detail |
Author |
Description |
Excerpt |
Reviews |
|
|
|
Author: Alice Schroeder
Publisher: Bantam
Pub. in: September, 2008
ISBN: 0553805096
Pages: 976
Measurements: 9.5 x 6.6 x 2.1 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA14064
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-0553805093
Due to release on September 29, 2008 in North America.
|
|
Rate this product:
|
|
- Awards & Credential -
This book becomes an instant bestseller even before its release on September 29, 2009. It now ranks #139 on Amazon.com in books as of September 1, 2008. |
|
- MSL Picks -
One of the most anticipated books of the fall is 'The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life.' The title's publisher, Bantam, paid $7.2 million for the North American rights and expects to sell more than 1 million hardcover copies of 'The Snowball,' which is due out Sept. 29.
Few investors have generated as much sustained public interest as Mr. Buffett, one of the world's richest men, with a fortune estimated as high as $62 billion. R.R. Bowker's Books in Print says there are an estimated 60 titles in print about him, with more than a dozen new ones on tap this year. Now Bantam is about to find out whether there's a limit to Buffetmania.
What separates 'The Snowball' by Alice Schroeder, was that Mr. Buffett pledged his cooperation to the first-time author. He gave her open access to two large file rooms that included material on his investments, his correspondence and topics of personal interest, she says. She says he provided her with a letter that she was able to show to people she wanted to interview that confirmed he was cooperating with her. The author, who initially met Mr. Buffett in the late 1990s when she was covering Berkshire Hathaway Inc., as an analyst at Paine Webber, estimates she spent 2,000 hours with Mr. Buffett during the project and recorded 300 hours of interviews. Mr. Buffett is chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, an Omaha-based conglomerate with large insurance holdings.
The book's title is based on a comment that Mr. Buffett is said to have once made: 'Life is like a snowball. The important thing is finding wet snow and a really long hill.'
Some publishers estimate Bantam will have to sell 600,000 to 700,000 copies to make a profit. The book's performance may well be affected by how much the 77-year-old investor cooperates in publicizing it and 'how much he represents that the book is accurate,' says Adrian Zackheim, publisher of the Portfolio business imprint of Pearson PLC's Penguin Group (USA). (Mr. Zackheim gave the manuscript a close look, but ultimately wasn't among the final bidders.) ...
Many believe 'The Snowball' will be a major hit. 'It will be my biggest book of the year,' says Dave Hathaway, business book buyer for Barnes & Noble Inc., the country's largest book retailer. 'There's a certain amount of mystery that shrouds him. He's the last true business icon.'
(From quoting Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, USA)
Target readers:
Anyone who's an avid Buffett reader. Also a great gift to serious investors and entrepreneurs.
|
|
Customers who bought this product also bought:
 |
Buffett, The Making of An American Capitalist (Paperback)
by Roger Lowenstein
A truly masterly job, this book stands out as the most recommended biography of Warren Buffett. |
 |
The Warren Buffett Way, Second Edition (Paperback)
by Robert G. Hagstrom (Author) , Bill Miller (Foreword) , Kenneth L. Fisher (Introduction)
It is both a fascinating read and a valuable resource for investors and business leaders - see how "the Most Famous Investor" and "the richest person in America " evaluate the worth of a company. |
 |
Buffettology, The Previously Unexplained Techniques That Have Made WARREN BUFFETT the World’s Most Famous Investor (Paperback)
by Mary Buffett, David Clark
A detailed financial guide on the Warren Buffett way of value investing. |
 |
The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing (Paperback)
by Benjamin Graham, Jason Zweig
First published in 1934, The Intelligent Investor is an all-time classic on value investing. |
 |
The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World (Hardcover)
by Alan Greenspan
Part memoir, part economic analysis, this long awaited new book from Alan Greenspan promises lots of surprises you'll be delighted to embrace. |
 |
Adventure Capitalist: The Ultimate Road Trip (Paperback)
by Jim Rogers
|
 |
Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (Paperback)
by Ron Chernow
A superb piece of biographical writing. Chernow writes at epic length, yet never fails to entertain, inform and awe-inspire. |
 |
The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance (Paperback)
by Ron Chernow
This remarkable biography is the most ambitious history ever written about an American banking dynasty. |
 |
Tearing Down the Walls, How Sandy Weill Fought His Way to the Top of the Financial World… and Then Nearly Lost It All (Paperback)
by Monica Langley
A most realistic biography of Sandy Weill and the history of City Bank. |
 |
What Works on Wall Street (Hardcover)
by James P. O'Shaughnessy
Learn what strategies have actually performed the best on Wall Street over the past 40 years using the compstat data base.
|
 |
A Bull in China: Investing Profitably in the World's Greatest Market (Hardcover)
by Jim Rogers
From legendary investor Jim Rogers, this book is a how-to guide for investors interested in following him to China and the Far East. |
 |
A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing, Ninth Edition (Paperback)
by Burton G. Malkiel
A classic investment manual and an excellent introduction into academic finance. |
 |
Common Sense on Mutual Funds: New Imperatives for the Intelligent Investor (Paperback)
by John C. Bogle
|
 |
Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment (Hardcover) (Hardcover)
by David F. Swensen
Excellent and important personal finance review for serious investors though a little difficult and dry. |
|
|
Author Alice Schroeder was a noted insurance industry analyst and writer who was a managing director at Morgan Stanley. She first met Warren Buffett when she published research on Berkshire Hathaway; her grasp of the subject and insight so impressed him that he offered her access to his files and to himself. Their friendship and mutual respect make her ideally positioned to write the The Snowball.
Ms. Schroeder was born in Texas, and she earned an undergraduate degree and her MBA at the University of Texas at Austin before moving east to work in finance. She is a former CPA and lives in Connecticut with her husband.
|
|
From Publisher
Here is THE book recounting the life and times of one of the most respected men in the world, Warren Buffett. The legendary Omaha investor has never written a memoir, but now he has allowed one writer, Alice Schroeder, unprecedented access to explore directly with him and with those closest to him his work, opinions, struggles, triumphs, follies, and wisdom. The result is the personally revealing and complete biography of the man known everywhere as “The Oracle of Omaha.”
Although the media track him constantly, Buffett himself has never told his full life story. His reality is private, especially by celebrity standards. Indeed, while the homespun persona that the public sees is true as far as it goes, it goes only so far. Warren Buffett is an array of paradoxes. He set out to prove that nice guys can finish first. Over the years he treated his investors as partners, acted as their steward, and championed honesty as an investor, CEO, board member, essayist, and speaker. At the same time he became the world’s richest man, all from the modest Omaha headquarters of his company Berkshire Hathaway. None of this fits the term “simple.”
When Alice Schroeder met Warren Buffett she was an insurance industry analyst and a gifted writer known for her keen perception and business acumen. Her writings on finance impressed him, and as she came to know him she realized that while much had been written on the subject of his investing style, no one had moved beyond that to explore his larger philosophy, which is bound up in a complex personality and the details of his life. Out of this came his decision to cooperate with her on the book about himself that he would never write.
Never before has Buffett spent countless hours responding to a writer’s questions, talking, giving complete access to his wife, children, friends, and business associates - opening his files, recalling his childhood. It was an act of courage, as The Snowball makes immensely clear. Being human, his own life, like most lives, has been a mix of strengths and frailties. Yet notable though his wealth may be, Buffett’s legacy will not be his ranking on the scorecard of wealth; it will be his principles and ideas that have enriched people’s lives. This book tells you why Warren Buffett is the most fascinating American success story of our time.
|
Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg (Wall Street Journal), USA
<2008-09-01 00:00>
One of the most anticipated books of the fall is 'The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life.' The title's publisher, Bantam, paid $7.2 million for the North American rights and expects to sell more than 1 million hardcover copies of 'The Snowball,' which is due out Sept. 29.
Few investors have generated as much sustained public interest as Mr. Buffett, one of the world's richest men, with a fortune estimated as high as $62 billion. R.R. Bowker's Books in Print says there are an estimated 60 titles in print about him, with more than a dozen new ones on tap this year. Now Bantam is about to find out whether there's a limit to Buffetmania.
What separates 'The Snowball' by Alice Schroeder, was that Mr. Buffett pledged his cooperation to the first-time author. He gave her open access to two large file rooms that included material on his investments, his correspondence and topics of personal interest, she says. She says he provided her with a letter that she was able to show to people she wanted to interview that confirmed he was cooperating with her. The author, who initially met Mr. Buffett in the late 1990s when she was covering Berkshire Hathaway Inc., as an analyst at Paine Webber, estimates she spent 2,000 hours with Mr. Buffett during the project and recorded 300 hours of interviews. Mr. Buffett is chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, an Omaha-based conglomerate with large insurance holdings.
The book's title is based on a comment that Mr. Buffett is said to have once made: 'Life is like a snowball. The important thing is finding wet snow and a really long hill.'
Some publishers estimate Bantam will have to sell 600,000 to 700,000 copies to make a profit. The book's performance may well be affected by how much the 77-year-old investor cooperates in publicizing it and 'how much he represents that the book is accurate,' says Adrian Zackheim, publisher of the Portfolio business imprint of Pearson PLC's Penguin Group (USA). (Mr. Zackheim gave the manuscript a close look, but ultimately wasn't among the final bidders.)
It's an intriguing issue because Mr. Buffett doesn't currently have plans to promote 'The Snowball.' In an email, an assistant to Mr. Buffett said the investor is 'not doing interviews about the book at this time.'
A person familiar with the situation says Mr. Buffett was initially upset about some of the content. The issue has to do with his first marriage. Mr. Buffett's first wife, Susan, left him and moved to San Francisco in 1977. The two, however, never divorced, and with his wife's encouragement, Astrid Menks, a waitress at the French Cafe in Omaha, eventually moved in with Mr. Buffett. She later married him following Susan's death in 2004.
The matter has been discussed publicly in the past, specifically in Roger Lowenstein's 1995 'Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist,' which stated that all three got along well together. Mr. Lowenstein is a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal.
In an email Friday, an assistant for Mr. Buffett said Mr. Buffett said it was 'not true' that he was limiting his promotional support because he was initially upset with the contents of the book.
Ms. Schroeder says Mr. Buffett understood that her book would explore this aspect of his personal life. 'He said to interview anyone I wanted,' she says.
What is less clear is whether Mr. Buffett expected that Ms. Schroeder would seek out and interview as many people as she did who were familiar with Susan Buffett's life. 'He said he wanted to reconcile his public and private selves,' says Ms. Schroeder. 'He knew I was thorough.'
Ms. Schroeder acknowledges that Mr. Buffett disagreed with some of what he read in the manuscript but says he didn't ask her to delete anything. She adds that she has 'multiple sources for everything of any significance in my book.'
In a previous email, Mr. Buffett said, 'I'm fine with the book and hope it sells well. It treats me better than I deserve but I'm willing to adjust to that.' An assistant to Mr. Buffett said the book will be available for sale at the company's next annual meeting in May and that 'sales should be very high.'
Some publishers wonder if the absence of Mr. Buffett on the morning talk shows could be a problem. Former General Electric Co. chief Jack Welch tirelessly flogged 'Straight from the Gut,' his 2001 memoir, on such shows and was able to overcome the fact it was published on the day of the 9/11 attacks. Revered both on Wall Street and Main Street, Mr. Buffett is only sporadically available to the public and would be a big draw in any television and radio campaign.
'It's very curious, because Warren clearly authorized her to write this book,' says Rick Wolff, publisher and editor-in-chief of Business Plus, an imprint owned by Lagardere SCA's Hachette Livre. 'This is unusual. A lot of money was spent on the book.'
Irwyn Applebaum, publisher of Bertelsmann AG's Bantam Dell Publishing Group, says Mr. Buffett's participation in promoting the book was never guaranteed. 'He gave her access to his contacts, his friends and the opportunity to get to know him better than any other writer, which is what makes the book so outstanding,' he says. 'Would we love to have Warren Buffett doing interviews for the book? Who wouldn't? But we're moving ahead as planned.' Ms. Schroeder has been booked to appear on NBC's 'Today' show on Sept. 29.
Ms. Schroeder, a public accountant by training, was a well-regarded insurance analyst at Morgan Stanley in 2003. After obtaining Mr. Buffett's cooperation on the book, she agreed to take a leave to work on the project full-time -- she remains an advisory director -- and when news of that decision circulated on Wall Street, several publishers contacted her. A friend then suggested that she work with agent David Black, who represents such best-selling authors as Mitch Albom and Erik Larson.
'People were beginning to slice him into tiny bits: investor, corporate manager, whatever,' says Ms. Schroeder of Mr. Buffett. 'I thought: This man has a unified way of looking at everything. It is one set of ideas. The right book answers the question: What events in his life formed this man and influenced him?'
In fall 2005, Mr. Black submitted a 160-page proposal to New York publishers. Two eager frontrunners emerged: Bantam's Mr. Applebaum and Gina Centrello, publisher of Bertelsmann's Random House Publishing Group. Each was asked to fly independently to Omaha to meet with Mr. Buffett. 'He needed assurances from publishers he had never met that they wouldn't market the book in a way that presented him as the quasi-author or that would make untrue claims,' says Ms. Schroeder, 51 years old.
Mr. Applebaum, who ultimately triumphed, declined to comment on the content of 'The Snowball.' And while he noted that it has become a ruthlessly competitive marketplace for new books, he added, 'Some books burn brightly week after week, and that's our expectation here.' Bantam declined to make a copy of the book available.
Many believe 'The Snowball' will be a major hit. 'It will be my biggest book of the year,' says Dave Hathaway, business book buyer for Barnes & Noble Inc., the country's largest book retailer. 'There's a certain amount of mystery that shrouds him. He's the last true business icon.' |
|
|
|
|
