The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life

Reviewed by Diario de un Inversor · UpdatedJune 13, 2026

Our review

«The Snowball» is the most exhaustive biography of Warren Buffett and one of the most revealing documents ever published about how an investment mind is built over decades. Alice Schroeder, a financial analyst who covered Berkshire Hathaway for Morgan Stanley, had sustained direct access to Buffett for approximately five years, giving the book a density of detail impossible to obtain from secondary sources. Published in 2008, it traces from Buffett's childhood in Omaha — where he was already organizing small businesses and memorizing baseball statistics — to the construction of Berkshire as a global conglomerate. The title alludes to the metaphor Buffett himself uses to describe compound interest: a small snowball that, rolling down a long snowy slope, accumulates mass exponentially. What distinguishes this book from other business biographies is that it does not avoid the subject's contradictions: Buffett as an absent father, his complex relationship with money and consumption, his tensions with family. The book is not an investment manual in the technical sense, but anyone who reads it will understand why Buffett's investment horizon is measured in decades rather than quarters.

Key takeaways

• Compound interest requires time to manifest: Buffett's greatest gains came in the second half of his investing life, not the first.
• The discipline of not investing in what one does not understand is as important as knowing what to invest in.
• Reputation and trust are real economic assets that Buffett has managed with the same attention as his financial investments.
• Consistency of principles over decades — not sporadic brilliance — is what separates the best investors from the rest.

Fact

Alice Schroeder, author of the book published in 2008, had direct access to Buffett for approximately five years; it is the only authorized biography of Warren Buffett.