Warren, around age two.

Warren in 1933 on the running board of the family’s first car, a used Chevrolet.

Warren dressed in one of his earliest costumes, which his father brought back from a business trip to New York City.

Ernest Buffett surrounded by his grandchildren: Warren and Doris at left, Bertie in Ernest’s lap.

Sidney Buffett, who founded the family grocery store in 1869, in a 1930 photograph with Alice Buffett, his granddaughter.

Warren’s father Howard (right rear) plays with his siblings George, Clarence, and Alice in the family’s fringed surrey. His mother Henrietta (holding younger brother Fred in her lap) sits in the back seat.

The Stahl sisters in West Point, Nebraska, around 1913. Warren’s mother Leila is top right. Seated beside her is Edith and, in front, Bernice.

Howard and Leila Buffett, shortly after their marriage in 1925.

Warren and Bertie in front of the family’s Buick, around 1938.

A revealing family portrait, around 1937.

Warren, age six, holds his favorite toy, a nickel-plated money-changer, in a photograph with his sisters from the winter of 1936-1937. He and Doris later recalled the unhappiness their faces expressed.

The eighth-grade class at Rosehill School, May 1943, showing the girls and boys of the disastrous “triple date” and Warren’s other crush, Clo-Ann Kaul.

Fred and Ernest Buffett in front of the Buffett & Son grocery store.

Bertie, Leila, and Warren sing to Doris’s accompaniment in Washington around 1945.

A 1948 campaign flyer for the only election Howard ever lost.

Howard Buffett, Congressman.

Warren (second left) and his father (fourth left) on a fishing trip with the Nebraska congressional delegation around 1945. The Buffetts look as though they’d rather be elsewhere.

As a preteen, Warren’s first love was Daisy Mae Scragg. She always loved Li’l Abner, no matter how he treated her.

Warren takes the contrarian view in a January 1946 debate about Congress’s problems; this aired on the Washington radio station WTOP’s “American School of the Air.”

Warren in the late 1940s, playing the uke in his classic battered tennis shoes and saggy socks.

The Buffetts in the summer of 1950. “Doris and Bertie were knockouts,” says Warren, who felt socially maladjusted.

Warren’s pledge photo for Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity at the University of Pennsylvania, January 1948. Howard Buffett was also an Alpha Sig.

Warren, Norma Thurston, and Don Danly pose next to the Springfield Rolls-Royce Brewster Coupe. Don and Warren bought it as a stunt in 1948.

In 1945, Warren and Lou Battistone “lusted after” Abbye “Pudgy” Stockton, the pioneer in women’s weight-lifting.

Warren sang and played the ukulele every morning before work at an employee “pep rally” in the basement of JC Penney’s, where he sold menswear and men’s furnishings in 1949.

Warren pretends to pick the pocket of his fraternity brother Lenny Farina in 1948.

In 1951, Warren dated Vanita Mae Brown, who was “Princess Nebraska” in the 1949 National Cherry Blossom Festival, as well as Miss Nebraska 1949.

Susan Thompson and Warren Buffett beaming at their wedding, April 19, 1952.

Susie Thompson as a preschooler.

Warren posing as a prisoner on his honeymoon, April 1952.

An undated photograph of Graham-Newman partners Jerome Newman and Benjamin Graham.

Warren teaching one of his early investing classes, probably Sound Investing in Stocks, at the University of Omaha, 1950s.

Susie Buffett in New York City, holding daughter Susie Jr. during a visit with Ben and Estey Graham. Estey is holding the Buffetts’ new baby, Howard Graham Buffett.

Susie with, clockwise, Peter, Howie, and Susie Jr., in the mid-1960s.

Charlie Munger as a baby in his father Al Munger’s arms, already wearing his trademark skeptical expression.

Buffett and his partner Charlie Munger in the 1980s. Buffett calls them “Siamese twins, practically.”

First meeting of the “Graham Group” at the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego, 1968. Left to right: Buffett, Robert Boorstin (a friend of Graham’s), Ben Graham, David “Sandy” Gottesman, Tom Knapp, Charlie Munger, Jack Alexander, Henry Brandt, Walter Schloss, Marshall Weinberg, Buddy Fox (in profile), and Bill Ruane. Roy Tolles took the photograph and Fred Stanback could not attend.

The Buffetts in the mid-1970s. Left to right, Howie (holding Hamilton), Susie, Peter (behind Susie), Warren, Susie Jr.

Susie Buffett glows in sequins before one of her singing performances at Omaha’s French Café, shortly before she moved to San Francisco.

The Buffetts celebrate the Pulitzer Prize awarded to the Sun Newspapers after the Boys Town exposé.

Susie Buffett Jr. at her November 1983 wedding to Allen Greenberg, who later became executive director of the Buffett Foundation.

Buffett and Washington Post publisher Kay Graham began a close, lifelong friendship in 1973.

Astrid Menks in 1974, age 28. Four years later Susie Buffett encouraged her to take care of Warren, and she ended up moving in with him.

Russian immigrant Rose Blumkin overcame hardship to build the largest furniture store in North America. She worked until age 103, a benchmark Warren often cites for himself.

Buffett at home in his kitchen, wearing a favorite threadbare sweater.

Buffett playing bridge with George Burns in 1991, at Burns’s 95^th birthday at the Hillcrest Country Club in Los Angeles. Not shown: Charlie Munger and a sign reading: “No smoking by anyone under 95.”

Throwing out the first pitch before the Omaha Royals’ home opener, April 11, 2003.

Chuck Rickershauser, the lawyer who said around 1976 of the convoluted business created by Buffett: “There’s got to be an indictment in here somewhere.”

Tooting a trumpet in his bathrobe. Ever since his boyhood fiasco at Rosehill Elementary, Buffett refuses to play the “echo.”

Charlie Munger reading with his grandchildren.

Buffett partnered with Sharon Osberg at his first bridge tournament, the 1994 world championships in Albuquerque, NM. They qualified for the finals but then withdrew because Warren was too exhausted to continue. The World Bridge Federation was appalled.

Buffett and Bill Gates at their first meeting, in July 1991, at the Gates family compound on Washington’s Hood Canal.

In 1993, Buffett places his hand on a computer mouse for the first time. He was “fearless,” says Sharon Osberg.

Buffett and “Mr. Coca-Cola” Don Keough sit surrounded by Buffett’s favorite beverage (and Berkshire’s largest stock holding).

With son Howie and daughter-in-law Devon. They were married in 1982.

Buffett’s longtime friend Bill Ruane, who died in 2005.

On Easter Sunday 1993, Bill Gates diverted his plane to Omaha and fooled Melinda French into a surprise meeting with Warren and Astrid at Borsheim’s to choose her engagement ring.

Warren and Astrid attend the May 1996 wedding of Peter Buffett and Jennifer Heil.

Buffett takes the wheel of a golf cart in Sun Valley, and Susie and Kay Graham take their lives in their hands.

Munger and Buffett answer reporters’ questions during the Berkshire Hathaway sharehold meeting weekend.

Buffett at Sun Valley with friends Diane von Furstenberg, Herbert Allen, and Barry Diller.

Right to left, Coca-Cola CEO Roberto Goizueta, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett on the 1997 panel moderated by Don Keough at which Gates offended Goizueta by paraphrasing Buffett’s view that Coca-Cola was easier to run than a technology company..

Susie Jr. points out her father’s unobtrusive baseball jersey number—⅙ because stocks were once priced in “teenies”—⅙ths of a dollar.

Warren and his sisters, Roberta Buffett Bialek (left) and Doris Buffett.

Totally focused on bridge while playing for the Corporate America bridge team against the U.S. Congress team in 1989.

With Kay Graham at her home on Martha’s Vineyard.

Improvising a toast at Bill and Melinda Gates’s wedding reception in 1994.

While on vacation with the Gateses during the Long-Term Capital Management crisis in 1998, Buffett tries to get satellite phone reception in the Grand Canyon.

Reunion of the original Graham Group in 1995. From the left: Buffett, Tom Knapp, Munger, Roy Tolles, Sandy Gottesman, Bill Scott, Marshall Weinberg, Walter Schloss, Ed Anderson, Bill Ruane.

Warren and Susie as Mickey and Minnie Mouse at an ABC-Cap Cities Event, 1997.

Buffett rides a camel in China during a 1995 trip with Bill and Melinda Gates.

Buffett and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan appear at the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce, February 20, 2004.

“End Zone” Buffett explains the finer points of the game during a charity event for Jean Naté.

Warren holds Susie close in July 2004, one of her few public appearances after recovering from oral cancer surgery.

Buffett shows his feelings for GEICO at the company’s new Amherst, NY, facility in January 2005.

Charlie Munger goes for a read in England.

Buffett and former president Bill Clinton at a Girls, Inc. fundraiser in Omaha, December 2006.

Buffett with friend Sharon Osberg.

Bill Gates Sr., Bill Jr., and Warren in China, 1998.

Bitten by a cheetah, chased by a polar bear … photographer and conservationist Howie Buffett donates to wildlife preservation.

At Buffett’s 75^th birthday party at Sharon Osberg and David Smith’s house, he and Gates attempt to learn landscape painting. Afterward, Buffett stands by his finished work of art.

After his colon-polyp surgery in 2000, Warren grew a beard for the first time in his life.

Warren, Doris, and Bertie reenact their childhood photograph (see this page) with expressions appropriate to their feelings at the time.

Buffett and Arnold Schwarzenegger at a NetJets conference for business leaders in England, September 2002.

Buffett interviews San Francisco 49ers cheerleaders for flight attendant jobs at another NetJets event.

Buffett concedes defeat to Ariel Hsing, the nine-year-old ping-pong player who trounced him on his birthday, August 30, 2005.

In May 2004 in New York, Bono presents Susie with a picture he painted of her featuring U2 lyrics. Afterward he declared they were “soulmates.”

Buffett’s friend Walter Schloss boogies the night away at his ninetieth birthday party in 2006.

On his birthday on August 30, 2006, two years after Susie’s death, Warren marries a tearful Astrid in a private ceremony at Susie Jr.’s house.

A scene from Peter Buffett’s Spirit: The Seventh Fire, a show about recovered identity. The Philadelphia Inquirer compared it to a Philip Glass opera, with “guitar rolls that would put U2’s The Edge to shame.”

Bill and Melinda Gates share a joyful day with Buffett on June 26, 2006, when he announces that he will give most of his fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.