1. Interview with Doris Buffett.
2. Ibid.
4. “Riot Duty Troops Gather in Omaha,” New York Times, July 5, 1966. The governor said the problem was unemployment, which ran triple that of whites. 30% of blacks were unemployed in Omaha.
5. Bertrand Russell, Has Man a Future? New York: Simon & Schuster, 1962. This powerful, absolutist book argued that unless something “radical” happened, mankind was eventually doomed by weapons of mass destruction, and predicted the development of mass chemical and biological weapons in the not-distant future.
6. The 1955 Russell-Einstein Manifesto. Russell was president of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1958, and was cofounder with Einstein of the Pugwash Conference, a group of scientists concerned about nuclear proliferation.
7. Interview with Dick Holland.
8. Buffett and his chief administrative officer John Harding chose a set of representative large-cap stocks, in effect creating a market index. Buffett did not want to execute the trade through a brokerage firm because the broker kept the proceeds from the sale and paid no interest to him. Harding contacted university endowment funds. Buffett went personally to Chicago to get shares. The idea of lending directly to a short-seller was so novel at the time that most universities passed. However, Harding was able to borrow about $4.6 million of stock.
9. Buffett put $500,000 into treasury bills in the first quarter of 1966.
10. Interview with Susie Buffett Jr., Meg Mueller, Mayrean McDonough.
11. Interview with Kelsey Flower.
12. Interview with Susie Buffett Jr.
13. Interview with Marshall Weinberg.