【商品详情】
书名：Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist巴菲特传:一个美国资本家的成长
作者：Roger Lowenstein
出版社名称：Random House Trade Paperbacks
出版时间：2008
语种：英文
ISBN：9780812979275
商品尺寸：14 x 2.8 x 21 cm
包装：平装
页数：512
沃伦·巴菲特，美国成功的集团企业的塑造者，一举一动都影响全球市场走势的投资大师，宣称在死后50年仍能管理和产生影响的人。作为投资人，巴菲特的投资智慧和人生历程历来受到众多投资者关注。在这部“投资者不可不读的投资经典”中，作者以巴菲特独有的投资风格和管理方式为焦点，对他充满传奇色彩的投资策略、人生哲学和管理智慧等进行深入透彻的描述和分析，并运用大量翔实的材料重现了巴菲特如何由一个奥马哈报童成长为一个投资大亨，如何在他所崇拜的导师格雷厄姆的影响下，寻找一只只被低估的股票，从而积累财富，如何将伯克希尔·哈撒韦公司塑造成美国大集团企业的奥秘……
并非每个人都能成为巴菲特，但是对于所有想从巴菲特的传奇人生和投资生涯中得到些许启示，提升自己的投资甚至人生层次的读者来说，Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist《巴菲特传：一个美国资本家的成长》会是你的*。
Since its hardcover publication in August of 1995, Buffett has appeared on the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Seattle Times, Newsday and Business Week bestseller lists. The incredible landmark portrait of Warren Buffett's uniquely American life is now available in paperback, revised and updated by the author.
Starting from scratch, simply by picking stocks and companies for investment, Warren Buffett amassed one of the epochal fortunes of the twentieth century--an astounding net worth of $10 billion, and counting. His awesome investment record has made him a cult figure popularly known for his seeming contradictions: a billionaire who has a modest lifestyle, a phenomenally successful investor who eschews the revolving-door trading of modern Wall Street, a brilliant dealmaker who cultivates a homespun aura.
Journalist Roger Lowenstein draws on three years of unprecedented access to Buffett's family, friends, and colleagues to provide the first definitive, inside account of the life and career of this American original. Buffett explains Buffett's' investment strategy--a long-term philosophy grounded in buying stock in companies that are undervalued on the market and hanging on until their worth invariably surfaces--and shows how it is a reflection of his inner self.
沃伦·巴菲特就好像希腊神话中的迈达斯神，有点石成金术。他的合伙人企业曾连续多年超过道·琼斯工业指数几十个百分点，令华尔街人士目瞪口呆。股东们对他的追随和关注，形成奇特的“巴菲特现象”－－他的健康状况会直接影响到股市行情的涨落。
巴菲特的成功并非偶然，九岁的他已经知道通过收集瓶盖来了解哪一种品牌的软饮料生意红火；在为《华盛顿邮报》做报童时，他就考虑过可以依靠增加产品线来获得更大利益。其投资生涯始于11岁，迄今个人财富已逾数百亿美元，曾一度超越比尔·盖茨，成为美国新首富。
本书Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist《巴菲特传：一个美国资本家的成长》的作者以生花妙笔叙述了巴菲特令人神往的一生，揭示了他的致富原则；并且对他投资伯克希尔、GEICO、《华盛顿邮报》、可口可乐、吉列等企业进行了生动详实的描写。语言轻松幽默，情节引人入胜。
罗杰•洛温斯坦，《华尔街日报》资深财经记者，负责股票专栏《华尔街听闻》和《固有价值》。罗杰在《华尔街日报》做财经记者期间，对伯克希尔•哈撒韦公司的掌舵人沃伦•巴菲特进行了多年的跟踪研究。本书既有投资者对这一行业的通晓，又具备一个记者的客观视角，堪称巴菲特传记中不可不读的经典著作。
Roger Lowenstein, author of the bestselling Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist, reported for The Wall Street Journal for more than a decade, and wrote the Journal's stock market column, Heard on the Street, from 1989 to 1991 and the Intrinsic Value column from 1995 to 1997. He now writes a column in Smart Money magazine, and has written for the New York Times and The New Republic, among other publications. Lowenstein has three children and lives in Westfield, New Jersey.
Chapter 1
OMAHA
Like a diamond set in emerald, gracing the west bank of the Missouri River, lies Omaha, the wonder city of the West and marvel of enterprise, ability, and progressiveness.
TELEPHONE COMPANY PROMOTION, 1900
Almost from the day that Dr. Pollard awakened him to the world, six pounds strong and five weeks early, Warren Buffett had a thirst for numbers. As a boy, he and his friend Bob Russell would pass an afternoon on the Russells’ front porch, which overlooked a busy intersection, recording the license-plate numbers of passing cars. When the sky darkened, they would go inside and spread open the Omaha World-Herald, counting how often each letter appeared and filling entire scrapbooks with progressions of numbers, as though they held the key to some Euclidean riddle. Often, Russell would reach for the almanac and read out a list of cities. One by one, Warren would spit back the populations. “I’d say a city, he’d hit it on the nose,” Russell would recall, half a century later. “I might say, ‘Davenport, Iowa; Topeka, Kansas; Akron, Ohio.’ If I gave him ten cities, he’d hit every one.” Baseball scores, horse-racing odds—every numeral was fodder for that precocious memory. Combed, scrubbed, and stuffed into a pew of Dundee Presbyterian Church, Warren would pass the time on Sundays calculating the life spans of ecclesiastical composers. He would stand in the living room with a paddle and ball, counting, counting by the hour. He would play Monopoly for what seemed forever—counting his imagined riches.
Blue-eyed, with a fair complexion and pink cheeks, Warren was intrigued not merely with numbers, but with money. His first possession was a nickel-coated money changer, given to him by his Aunt Alice at Christmas and thereafter proudly strapped to his belt. When he was five, he set up a gum stand on his family’s sidewalk and sold Chiclets to passersby. After that, he sold lemonade—not on the Buffetts’ quiet street, but in front of the Russells’ house, where the traffic was heavier.
At nine, Warren and “Russ” would count the bottle caps from the soda machine at the gas station across from the Russells’ house. This was not idle counting, but a primitive market survey. How many Orange Crush caps? How many Cokes and root beers? The boys would cart the caps in a wagon and store them in Warren’s basement, piles of them. The idea was, which brand had the highest sales? Which was the best business?
At an age when few children knew what a business was, Warren would get rolls of ticker tape from his stockbroker father, set them on the floor, and decipher the ticker symbols from his father’s Standard & Poor’s. He would search the local golf course for used but marketable golf balls. He would go to Ak-Sar-Ben* racetrack and scour the saw-dusted floors, turning over torn and discarded stubs and often finding a winning ticket that had been erroneously thrown away. In the sweltering Nebraska summers, Warren and Russ would carry golf clubs for the rich gentlemen at the Omaha Country Club and earn $3 for the day. And at dusk, as they rocked on the Russells’ front-porch glider in the stillness of the Midwestern twilight, the parade of Nashes and Stude-bakers and the clanging of the trolley car would put a thought in Warren’s mind. All of that traffic with no place to go but right by the Russells’ house, he would say—if only there were a way to make some money off it. Russell’s mom, Evelyn, recalled Warren after fifty years. “All that traffic,” he would say to her. “What a shame you aren’t making money from the people going by.” As if the Russells could set up a toll booth on North 52nd Street. “What a shame, Mrs. Russell.”
What, then, was the source?
Warren was the second of three children, and the only son. His mother was a petite, feisty woman from a small town in Nebraska. She had a lively temperament and, as was said of women relegated to a supporting role, “a good head for numbers.” Warren’s father, a serious but kind man, was surely the dominant influence in his life. Opening to Warren’s eyes the world of stocks and bonds, he must have planted a seed, but insofar as such things are knowable, Howard Buffett’s acumen for numbers was not on a par with his son’s. Nor was his passion for making money. What was it, then, that prompted Warren to turn from that mannered, comfortable household—to crawl along the floor of the racetrack as though it were a bed of pearl oysters? What was it that would enable him, years later, to stun his colleagues in business-time and again—by computing columns of figures in his head, and by recalling encyclopedic volumes of data as easily as he had the population of Akron? Warren’s younger sister, Roberta, said flatly, “I think it was in his genes.”
