“Even people who don’t care a whit about business will be intrigued by this portrait.… Schroeder, a former insurance-industry analyst, spent years interviewing Buffett, and the result is a side of the Oracle of Omaha that has rarely been seen.”

—Time

“Alice Schroeder’s accumulation of detail, her vivid, artless descriptions of people and places, and the resulting narrative fluidity make this a compelling book. It has the bouncing vitality of an early Sinclair Lewis novel.”

—The Times Literary Supplement

“The Snowball is likely to remain the most authoritative portrait of one of the most important American investors of our time.”

—Los Angeles Times

“In this startlingly frank account of Buffett’s life, Schroeder, a former managing director at Morgan Stanley—and hand picked by Buffett to be his biographer—strips away the mystery that has long cloaked the world’s richest man to reveal a life and fortune erected around lucid and inspired business vision and unimaginable personal complexity.”

—Publishers Weekly

“An instructive chronicle of financial success at a moment when financial failure is on everyone’s mind … There are lessons to be learned.… Most tellingly: The next time Warren Buffett warns of a crisis, we’d all better listen.”

—The Wall Street Journal

“[I]f the replication of any great achievement first requires knowledge of how it was done, then The Snowball, the most detailed glimpse inside Warren Buffett and his world that we likely will ever get, should become a Bible for capitalists.”

—The Washington Post

“A … penetrating and personal look at the Oracle of Omaha … [gets] deeply inside the head of the man who achieved such amazing long-term investment returns that some academics believe them to be a fluke.”

—BusinessWeek

“[Schroeder] has sought to describe Buffett’s psychological landscape as clearly as his financial one. For the reader, the results are pretty terrific.… In describing how Buffett’s mind works, and why it is so well suited to his chosen career, Schroeder is particularly good.… Schroeder’s brave book offers a close-up of [Buffett’s] cellulite, but more fairly, in the context of a genuinely delightful character.… [H]istory’s most legendary investor was not a cartoon but a real live human being. And still, somehow, deeply admirable.”

—MICHAEL LEWIS, The New Republic

“An unvarnished and well-paced biography that is essential for all public and academic business collections.”

—Library Journal

“The mandatory book to read in these treacherous times of financial crisis.”

—Forbes

“Buffett has been ahead of the curve for most of the past fifty years, making him one of the world’s richest people. Alice Schroeder’s … The Snowball provides some clues about how he’s done it.”

—Financial Times

“[Ms. Schroeder’s] real contribution is her own investment expertise which enables her to make the convoluted financing schemes over the last fifty years understandable to lay readers and truly instructive to the business information junkie.”

—The Washington Times

CELEBRATED AS ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2008
BY MANY PUBLICATIONS, INCLUDING

Time magazine Top 5 Non-Fiction Books of 2008

People magazine Top 10 Books of 2008

BusinessWeek Best Business Books of 2008

USA Today Best Business Books of 2008

The New York Times Janet Maslin’s 10 Favorite Books of 2008

Publishers Weekly Staff Picks of 2008

Barnes and Noble Best Life Stories of 2008

Amazon.com Editors’ Best of 2008