Word: schroeder
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...Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life By Alice Schroeder Bantam Books; 976 pages...
...left for San Francisco. She and Warren lived apart for 27 years, and while they still talked extensively by phone, he was crushed by what he considered the biggest mistake of his life. "He wandered aimlessly around the house, barely able to feed and clothe himself," writes Schroeder. For a while, Susie thought she'd have to go back, but in the end she asked Astrid Menks, a restaurant hostess and sommelier she knew, to check up on her husband. Eventually, Astrid moved in. "Susie put me together, and Astrid keeps me together," was how Buffett came to explain things...
...from Sears, yet also filed his first tax return, for $7, deducting his wristwatch and bicycle as expenses in his newspaper-delivery business. And there is the Buffett who desperately craves attention and gets excited when a porn star says on her website that he's her hero. Buffett, Schroeder writes, is "at heart nothing more than a starstruck little kid, endearingly clueless in many ways about his place in the pantheon...
...Most riveting is the portrait Schroeder paints of the family's dealing with Susie's oral cancer. Buffett, who always expected his wife to outlive him, reels from the news. He is terrified of losing her and cries for hours. Buffett had always avoided hospitals and was squeamish about all things medical - a "man who ducked the subject of a common cold and used terms like 'not feeling up to par' as euphemisms for illness; the man who changed the subject uneasily whenever anyone spoke of physical complaints." And yet with his wife undergoing radiation after facial surgery, he overcomes...
...when Susie eventually does die, Buffett can't cope. As his daughter, also named Susie, is planning the funeral, she tells him he doesn't have to attend. "Warren was overcome with relief," Schroeder writes. " 'I can't,' he said. To sit there, overwhelmed with thoughts of Susie, in front of everyone, was too much...