1. Interview with Doris Buffett.
2. Witnessed by a source close to the family who described it in an interview.
3. AIDS had first been discovered among homosexual men in the summer of 1981, but it was reported as pneumonia and as a rare, fatal form of cancer. President Reagan made his first mention of AIDS in September 1985 after his friend, the actor Rock Hudson, announced that he had been diagnosed with the disease.
4. Interview with Marvin Laird and Joel Paley.
5. This story was pieced together from conversations with a number of sources.
6. Alan Levin, “Berkshire Hathaway to Close,” New Bedford Standard-Times, August 12, 1985.
7. A four-year-old loom that had cost $5,000 went for $26 as scrap. Some of the equipment went to a textile museum.
8. Buffett used the term “disaster” in the 1978 chairman’s letter, discussing NICO workers’ comp businesses’ bad performance, which he laid largely at the door of industry problems.
9. Interviews with Verne McKenzie, Dan Grossman. The man was an agent who allegedly embezzled from Berkshire.
10. Interview with Tom Murphy.
11. Interview with Verne McKenzie.
12. Interview with Dan Grossman.
13. Several reinsurance managers presided during a short-lived interregnum: Brunhilda Hufnagle, Steven Gluckstern, and Michael Palm. For various reasons, none of them stuck.
14. Rob Urban, “Jain, Buffett Pupil, Boosts Berkshire Cash as Succession Looms,” Bloomberg News, July 11, 2006. While the author has been acquainted with Jain for years, he declined repeated requests to be interviewed.