The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life
By Alice Schroeder
Bloomsbury £25, 960 pages
FT Bookshop price: £18

How do you explain Warren Buffett? Everyone knows that in a deep and liquid capital market like that of the US, it is just about impossible to beat the stock market averages over anything more than the short term. But Buffett has been ahead of the curve for most of the past 50 years, making him one of the world’s richest people.