The full title adds “Warren Buffet and the Business of Life.” There were 838 pages, and I read every one of them.  The richest man in the world thinks of himself as “hard-wired” to make money.  It’s as if he had a double gene for stock analysis, and maybe he does.  His whole life—from young childhood—has been devoted to thinking about and making dough.  He has an uncanny ability with numbers.  I guess that’s where the genetics comes in. Couple that with a psychological need to be successful, maybe some urgent desire to please/beat out his father who was a successful, if small time, stockbroker.  Add to that his supreme confidence when it comes to stocks plus an extreme desire to please—as in his partners when he first started out investing big time, and now his shareholders.  And there’s the icing on the cake: his deep and abiding faith in compounding.  Buffet’s private life is layered in uncanny ways.  He idolizes his [late] wife Susy but she lives apart from him.  They always get together for family functions, however, and he is at her side (almost) when she dies of cancer.  At the same time, back in Omaha, Buffet lives with Astrid in an arrangement rigged up by Susy. Susy and Astrid remain fast friends throughout. Buffet makes much about being a humble Omaha boy, living in the same house for 50-odd years, not making zillionaires of his kids thru inherited wealth. Don’t be fooled; the Buffet family lives as royalty: private jets, multiple homes, vacations in exotic places, and—at least with the paterfamilias—public adulation. [11-12/08]