This article is a new installment in a series of “mini reviews” of my reading. Previous installments in the series, along with other compilations, appear below:
2025: Q1
2024: Q1 • Q2 • Q3 • Q4
2023: Q1 • Q2 • Q3 • Q4
2022: Q1 • Q2 • Q3 • Q4
2021: Q3 • Q4
2020: Complete Reading List • Summer Book Recommendations
2019: Holiday Book Recommendations
2018: Holiday Book Recommendations
Full Listing of All Book Reviews Published Since 2009
The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life
Author: Alice Schroeder
Year of Publication: 2008
Length: 935 pages
In January 1999, Alice Schroeder wrote an extensive report on Berkshire Hathaway entitled The Ultimate Conglomerate Discount. As an analyst at PaineWebber, Ms. Schroder impressed Warren Buffett with her knowledge of the insurance industry as well as her talent for writing. Her 1999 report was groundbreaking in terms of its explanation of the power of Berkshire’s float. A few years later, Mr. Buffett encouraged Ms. Schroeder to write his biography by providing generous access to his personal and professional papers as well as encouraging his friends, family, and business associates to cooperate with the project. The Snowball was published in the fall of 2008, right in the midst of the worst phase of the financial crisis.
I read The Snowball soon after it was published but I was no doubt distracted by the financial crisis and the demands of the job I had at the time. When Mr. Buffett announced his retirement as CEO of Berkshire at the annual meeting in May, I decided that it would be a good time to revisit his biography. I have often found that revisiting books that I read earlier in my life yield new insights. When I first read The Snowball, I was amusingly focused on how I might replicate Mr. Buffett’s investment success. The book certainly went into details about his investment approach, but this is not an investing book. As a biographer, Ms. Schroder appropriately sought to write a book covering Mr. Buffett’s entire life. While I found the personal details interesting, I did not find much that I didn’t already know about Mr. Buffett’s investment approach.
Having long since given up any delusions about replicating Mr. Buffett’s investment record, this time around I was more interested in learning who he was as a younger man and how he changed as he progressed through middle age. Ms. Schroeder’s work has been the subject of some criticism regarding the details of Mr. Buffett’s life that she uncovered in the course of extensive interviews. However, it is very interesting to know the personal challenges facing an individual along with the business activities they were engaged with at the same time. For example, Mr. Buffett’s ability to deal with challenges such as the Buffalo News and the complexities of merging Diversified Retailing and Blue Chip into Berkshire are even more impressive when one understands the turmoil in his personal life during that period.
I suspect that neither the author nor the subject of the book expected that the story was nowhere near its conclusion in 2008. It is obvious that another biography of Warren Buffett remains to be written to cover the massive growth of Berkshire Hathaway since 2008. Alice Schroeder accomplished a great deal by interviewing so many of Mr. Buffett’s contemporaries who are sadly no longer alive today. No future biographer will have that kind of access, but the early years are now well documented.
I suggest taking the time to read the endnotes since they provide additional context that is very interesting, at least to Berkshire Hathaway “cult members” and nerds who never get tired of getting into the weeds.
The Best of Jonathan Clements
Author: Jonathan Clements
Editors: Christine Benz, William Bernstein, Allan Roth, and Jason Zweig
Year of Publication: 2025
Length: 236 pages
After writing about investing for decades at the Wall Street Journal, Jonathan Clements founded Humble Dollar, a blog about personal finance. I do not know Jonathan, but when you read someone’s work for decades, you feel like you almost know them. So I was shocked and saddened to read of Jonathan’s stage four cancer diagnosis when he wrote about it a year ago. It is particularly terrible to read about cancer impacting someone who is only in his early sixties and has written about his own meticulous retirement planning.
Over the past year, I have continued to follow Jonathan’s articles on Humble Dollar and when I read about the publication of a book that compiled his best articles, I immediately ordered it. The book contains a selection of his articles written over the past three decades, all of which retain relevance today. The articles appear to be published as initially written, although I noticed that the editors made some useful changes such as updating details like the estate tax exemption to make it more useful for current readers.
All of the proceeds from the book are going to a new charitable initiative called The Jonathan Clements Getting Going on Savings Initiative which is run by The John C. Bogle Center for Financial Literacy.
The Haywire Heart
Authors: Christopher J. Case, John Mandrola, and Lennar Zinn
Year of Publication: 2017
Length: 294 pages
The obesity epidemic makes it clear that the vast majority of Americans are getting far too little exercise, and nearly everyone could benefit from increasing their commitment to being active. However, for a small subset of endurance athletes, there is a danger of exerting the heart to the point where dangerous arrhythmias and other exercise-driven heart adaptations can develop over long periods of time and result in consequences that range from merely annoying to life-threatening.
Although I was never overweight, until my mid-thirties my level of exercise consisted of getting out for a jog a few times a week, if I was lucky. My stress level was through the roof and my diet was abysmal. Although retiring at a very early age is a mixed bag, there is no doubt that I had far more time to focus on my health after I quit my job in 2009. I began to train for a marathon, a long-held goal, and promptly injured myself. However, I eventually got into long distance running and completed eight marathons, posting finishing times that were respectable although frustratingly short of qualifying for the Boston Marathon.
I read this book because I was concerned that my current habit of running ~200 miles per month could be too much, especially in light of other heart-related risk factors for someone in his early-fifties. My conclusion is that my level of training is well short of the individuals profiled in the book, especially since I no longer run marathons. However, I might still cut back a little because I am exercising far in excess of what’s needed for heart health. I would suggest this book for anyone who does a lot of cardiovascular exercise, especially long distance cyclists, swimmers, or triathletes. Many of the victims of arrhythmias were in their fifties which seems to be the point at which decades of slow changes can become symptomatic.
Plato’s Republic
Author: Plato
Translator: Desmond Lee (Penguin Classics)
Year of Publication: ~375 BC
Length: 416 pages
My first attempt to read Plato’s Republic was in early 2024 and I wrote an article about the first two books of this lengthy and complicated work. I decided that my attempt was premature and thought that a better understanding of Ancient Greek culture would allow me to better appreciate Plato’s arguments. This led me to read the Greek tragedies and comedies in 2024 and early 2025.
In April, I started reading The Republic at the beginning and, with the excellent introductions and notes provided by Desmond Lee in the Penguin Classics edition, I was able to follow the entire dialog to its conclusion. To say that I was shocked by Plato’s vision of an optimal society is an understatement. Many people seem to believe that Plato’s Republic was some kind of precursor to modern-day republics such as the United States. This is certainly not the case. Plato’s ultimate vision of the Philosopher-King ruler has little in common with our modern notions of what a republican form of government means.
That is not to say that Plato has nothing useful to tell us. Through the mouth of Socrates, Plato develops many complex philosophical ideas regarding education, justice, virtue, honor, what it means to live a good life, and the afterlife. However, it is hard to get past some of his extreme communal ideas, such as essentially banning the family unit, at least among the elite guardian class. The form of eugenics involved in the “breeding” of the guardian class would no doubt horrify almost everyone who reads it today.
I have more than twenty-five pages of notes and reflections on The Republic and will most likely return to it again at some point in the future. However, after spending well over a month on it, reading most sections multiple times, I set it aside for now and certainly won’t hazard making more comments in public at this point. My recommendation is to start with other works of Plato, such as the collection in the Penguin Classics The Last Days of Socrates which I wrote about in last quarter’s summary of my reading.
The Fall of the Roman Republic
Americans of all political persuasions have been concerned about the potential fall of our republic in recent years, and I share this concern. It has become common to compare the United States of the early twenty-first century to the final decades of the Roman Republic, but I sometimes wonder if people making these comparisons understand the degree of violence and brutality of the Roman Republic’s final years. Nothing that has taken place since our Civil War approaches what took place in the finals decades in Rome.
I would recommend the following books for those interested in the long process that eventually led to the collapse of the Roman Republic. I returned to both of these books in the second quarter for a second time:
The Storm Before the Storm by Mike Duncan. I wrote up some thoughts about this book when I first read it in the third quarter of 2022. It covers the period from 144 BC to 78 BC, seeking to set the fall of the Republic as a story that goes back more than a century before the final fall.
Rubicon by Tom Holland. This book focuses most of its attention on the fall of the Republic, centering the story on Julius Caesar’s famous crossing of the Rubicon river in 49 BC. However, it also contains a summary of earlier events, including touching on the populist movement of the Gracchi brothers where Mike Duncan begins his narrative.
I also read some of the brief biographical sketches of the main characters by Plutarch and found the profiles of the Gracchi brothers most interesting. Plutarch lived from 46 to 120 AD and collected fascinating information about a wide range of individuals, drawing on some source material that has since been lost. All contemporary accounts of the Roman Republic draw heavily on Plutarch and other ancient sources.
How to Make Friends and Influence People
Author: Dale Carnegie
Year of Publication: 1936
Length: 275 pages
As I read through this classic, I kept asking myself why I failed to read it three decades ago when it would have made a major difference in my life. Dale Carnegie’s common sense approach for dealing with people is just as valid in 2025 as it was in the 1930s when the book was first published. One could say that it is all simple common sense, but it is also clear that very few people employ the strategies he advocates.
While the book is most often categorized as “self-help” or “career development” it is also a work of basic human psychology and I was frequently reminded of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini. As is the case with Cialdini’s techniques, one could attempt to use Carnegie’s approach to disingenuously manipulate people, but Carnegie did not think such an approach would work. In his view, sincerity is something that can be easily detected by most people. He stressed that he was advocating adopting an entirely new way of life, not simply a listing of “tricks” to get what you want.
Warren Buffett took a Dale Carnegie public speaking course in the early 1950s which changed his life. I am sure that he also read this book very early in his life. As I read the book, it was obvious that Mr. Buffett has adopted many of the techniques in the book, especially when dealing with sellers of businesses and managers of Berkshire’s operating companies.
The King James Bible
Year of Publication: 1611
Pages: 1,484
I decided to read the King James Bible after listening to a Books of Titans podcast by Erik Rostad. It occurred to me that making the effort to understand this translation of the Bible could help me understand the form of language that Shakespeare used in his plays. Although I did not plan to read Shakespeare anytime soon, I might change my mind after reading the King James Bible. I found the translation not only very readable but far more elegant than other translations I have read. There is something about the language, which was elevated even at the time it was written, that makes the experience memorable.
The version I read, which I linked to above, is not a “study bible” but it does have extensive cross-references and provides useful notes in cases where the archaic language could lead to misunderstanding. Since I have read many translations of the Bible over the past fifteen years, I am already very familiar with the scriptures and could have probably figured out the obscure wording myself, but having the notes within this book helped ease the process significantly. Reading any translation of the Bible in three months is a challenge, but it worked out to about sixteen pages per day, on average, and it was a pleasure to read.
I would not suggest the King James Bible to someone who has never read the Bible before. A more modern translation such as the ESV or RSV is easier to comprehend. But if you have read these modern translations and plan to read the Bible again, the King James Bible is worth considering.
God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible
Author: Adam Nicolson
Year of Publication: 2005
Length: 271 pages
I decided to read this book after listening to another Books of Titan’s podcast. Erik Rostad recommended this book for those interested in how the King James Bible was created. This book does get into the “weeds” of politics in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, as well as controversies within Protestantism at the time. King James commissioned a group to translate the Bible, drawing on earlier English translations that were already popular at the time. Although the King James Bible was not initially as popular as earlier translations, especially the Geneva Bible which was favored by the Puritans, the King James translation survived the test of time. It remains one of the most widely read English translations over four centuries after initial publication.
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