Schroeder writes that one of the books that influenced Buffett greatly in his youth was Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People". Buffett applied the lessons of that book throughout his life. Schroeder comes up with the term "Carnegize".. This book is technically not an autobiography but for all practical reasons it is one. Buffett Carnegized Schroeder to write this book. I am not a fan of autobiographies. No matter how hard authors try, they cannot help being biased. Furthermore, a complementary book written by Schroeder is a lot more flattering than if it was written by Buffett. Having read much about Buffett, I suspect he realized the advantages of motivating a good author like Schroeder to write his biography. Her book mostly paints Buffett in a positive light. Nothing wrong with that especially that I believe he is a brilliant man. His values, motivations, intelligence and logic are impressive and deserve lots of praise. However, Schroeder falls short when it comes to some of the more sensitive aspects of Buffett's life. Here are three examples. Buffett's relationship with Susie (his first wife) and Astrid (his second wife) was unique and I had always been intrigued by it. Schroeder sheds little or no new light on what made this three-way relationship work. Also, Buffett and his sisters had a troubling relationship with their mother. Schroeder repeatedly brings this up but does not go into depth as to why they were so troubled by their mother. Finally when Susie died she left 8 million dollars to John McCabe, her former tennis coach. She most likely was in a romantic relationship with him but Schroeder fails to explore this. I suspect investigating some of these issues would be troubling to Buffett and Schroeder probably wanted to please this kind man who was granting her so many interviews. I don't blame her for that but yet a great biography must not shy away from exposing important aspects of the individual's life. She interviewed lots of people for her book and could have easily enlightened readers more about some more aspects of Buffett's life. "Snowball" is a well-written and engaging biography. Readers will learn a lot about a great man famous for his two greatest virtues, honesty and rationality. Schroeder's book requires no business background (she even has a footnote explaining what Dow Jones Industrials Average means) and is geared for all types of readers.
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