Book Review: "Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist"

I just finished reading Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist by Roger Lowenstein and I was surprised that it ended up being pretty good. I picked the book off the shelf of the Bazarsky's while I was staying at their home this past weekend and thought it would make a good "time killer" while I waited for Craig and co. to wake up. It ended up being quite the captivating book and since Craig didn't wake up for another 4 hours, I got a lot of reading in (and consequently was hooked).

I figured, by the way, that another feature of this blog would be to keep you up to date on the books I complete. There are two benefits (I think) to this: you get a concise summary of the book, at which point you can decide if you want to read it yourself or not, and you get to see what I'm reading (which may or may not be a positive!)

The book chronicles the life of Warren Buffett - from his beginnings all the way until the mid 90's (this book is a few years old). Just by reading about his formative years, and the remarkable way he thought about business and making money, I can understand how he ended up being so wealthy. I'm hesitant to use the word successful because the definition of successful is vague - while it can refer to money, it could also refer to happiness, etc. and we'll never know for sure if Buffett ever has been truly happy. For example, I did not know his wife Susie "left" him but that they never divorced. I also never realized how close to a hermit Buffett was during most of his life - I'm glad to see he's starting to lighten up.

While there are many things I disagree with Buffett on (for example, his extreme thriftiness), I certainly learned from the book and would say it's a pretty good read though not exactly life changing. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the best, I'd rate this book a 6. The book got dull at points, perhaps delved too much into certain deals, and really would have scored a bit lower except for the very interesting subject matter.