Warren Buffett is one of those rare things; an almost impossibly successful investor with a Midas touch and an Everyman appeal that keeps him accessible and therefore inspirational to the average investor, or wannabe investor. He is an investor, magnate and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, and was nicknamed the Wizard of Omaha by many business media outlets. One of the things that makes him stand out amongst other magnates and philanthropists is his own dedication to frugality. As such an intriguing and successful man, he was constantly pursued by publishers and writers to cooperate on a biography but he turned down all comers until he approached Alice Schroeder, the only Wall Street analyst to whom he would speak, and asked her to write his biography.
Like most people, Schroeder said yes to Warren Buffett, leaving her job at Morgan Stanley and relocating to Omaha, Nebraska, to work on the book full time. As well as interviewing with Buffett and his family, as well as his business associates, she also studied his personal files and papers for over two thousand hours. Buffett promised that he would not ask her to make any distorting revisions to the book or veto anything she had written. Ever self-deprecating, he also told her that when accounts differed she should use the one that flattered him the least.
The book was incredibly well-received (it seemed that no revisions had been necessary). It was Amazon's best-selling book of the year and the Washington Post called it the Bible for all capitalists. Never returning to her job at Morgan Stanley, Schroeder went on to become a columnist for Bloomberg News.
