The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life (ISBN 0553805096) is a biography about Warren Buffett by Alice Schroeder.

Before this book was written, Warren Buffett rejected numerous approaches by biographers, journalists, and publishers to cooperate on an account of his life. After spending six years as the only Wall Street analyst Buffett would speak to, Alice Schroeder was approached by Buffett to write his biography. In 2003, she left her job at Morgan Stanley and traveled to Omaha to work on the book full-time. Schroeder spent over 2,000 hours reading Buffett's personal files while interviewing Buffett, his wife, children, sisters, friends, and business associates. Before Schroeder began writing, Buffett told her he would not ask for any revisions once the book was finished and, where accounts of his life differed, to always use the "less flattering version."

The Snowball was Amazon.com's best business and investing book of the year 2008.Time Magazine, People Magazine, and critic Janet Maslin of the New York Times named it one of ten best books of the year. The Washington Post, the Financial Times, BusinessWeek, and Publishers Weekly also each named The Snowball the best book of 2008. The book was shortlisted for the 2008 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award, as well as the 2009 Gerald Loeb Award for distinguished business journalism. A reviewer in The Economist noted that for those "hoping for detailed analyses of his investment record" the place to start is "Mr. Buffett’s collected essays and annual reports." As a look at Buffett, the Washington Post stated The Snowball was "the most detailed glimpse inside Warren Buffett and his world that we likely will ever get...a bible for capitalists” and the Los Angeles Times wrote it was "the most authoritative portrait of one of the most important American investors of our time."

Alice Schroeder (born December 14, 1956) is an American author and insurance analyst. In the first week of October 2008, she published The Snowball, Warren Buffett and the Business of Life, which debuted as a #1 New York Times bestseller. Alice was Institutional Investor's highest rated insurance analyst at Morgan Stanley. At the US FASB, she drafted and oversaw SFAS No. 113, sweeping changes to the US reinsurance accounting rules. Since 2008, her columns have been published in Bloomberg News. In 2008 BusinessWeek, chose her alongside Ben Bernanke and Hillary Clinton as one of the "People to Watch in 2008." Snowball was named a finalist at the 2009 Gerald Loeb Awards for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism and shortlisted for the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award.

Alice Lynnette Davey is a native of Dallas, Texas. Her father was a lawyer, and her mother was a housewife. She has a BBA in finance and an MBA from the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin.[1] In 1990, she married Harold Schroeder, a CPA. They divorced in 2006. Schroeder married executive search consultant David Moyer in 2008.[2]

Warren Edward Buffett (/ˈbʌfɨt/; born August 30, 1930) is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He is widely considered the most successful investor of the 20th century. He is the primary shareholder, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. He is consistently ranked among the world's wealthiest people. He was ranked as the world's wealthiest person in 2008 and is the third wealthiest person in the world as of 2011. In 2012, American magazine Time named Buffett one of the most influential people in the world.

Buffett is called the "Wizard of Omaha", "Oracle of Omaha", or the "Sage of Omaha" and is noted for his adherence to the value investing philosophy and for his personal frugality despite his immense wealth. Buffett is also a notable philanthropist, having pledged to give away 99 percent of his fortune to philanthropic causes, primarily via the Gates Foundation. On April 11, 2012, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Buffett was born in 1930 in Omaha, Nebraska, the second of three children and only son of U.S. Representative Howard Buffett, a fierce critic of the interventionist New Deal domestic and foreign policy, and his wife Leila (née Stahl). Buffett began his education at Rose Hill Elementary School in Omaha. In 1942, his father was elected to the first of four terms in the United States Congress, and after moving with his family to Washington, D.C., Warren finished elementary school, attended Alice Deal Junior High School, and graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in 1947, where his senior yearbook picture reads: "likes math; a future stock broker."