Schroeder gives Buffett's dividend policy just one paragraph, among her hundreds of pages. And there, she treats it as something which is clearly and obviously correct:

Feeling flush during what would turn out to be a brief moment of financial success—"we were selling out of Rayon linings for a few months and making a lot of money"—Buffett had let himself get talked into a ten-cent-per-share dividend. The firm's lawyers had argued that Berkshire was doing so well that it might be accused of unjustifiably retaining earnings. Either while daydreaming or simply in a moment of weakness, Buffett went along with the distibution; a dime a share sounded measly; it somehow took him 24 hours to realize the fallacy of their argument. By then it was too late and his uncharacteristic agreeableness had showered on the partners and shareholders $101,733 that he knew he could have turned into millions someday. He would never make a mistake like that again.

But of course it's not as simple as that. If Buffett implemented a dividend, he could set up a check-the-box option where it was automatically reinvested into the company—a "scrip dividend," it's called in Britain, which essentially involves paying the dividend in equity rather than cash. Investors could then easily keep all their money invested in Berkshire Hathaway, just as they do now—but they'd also have the option of taking some cash money out now and then, which might be very welcome.

Instead, Warren knows best: No matter what their domestic financial position, his shareholders should entrust him not only with their initial investment but also with all of the profits which accrue from that investment.

This is consistent with Buffett's own lifestyle. He takes a modest salary and keeps the vast majority of his wealth in Berkshire stock where it won't ever be spent, just used as an incredibly valuable scorecard in the world's-richest-man stakes.

It's worth noting that somehow he's persuaded the compilers of such lists that all of that stock should be assigned to him, even after he gave most of it away to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other charities. Buffett is one man who really can both give his money away and keep it, at the same time.

But not everybody is like Buffett, as this book makes abundantly clear. Buffett was making thousands of dollars on paper rounds before he even got to high school, a huge sum, in the early 1940s. He bought his first stock in sixth grade.

He never concentrated half as much on his studies as he did on making money. While his peers were socializing, he was very much the precocious businessman, even in his early teens. And, of course, he was extremely smart, blessed with a prodigious and photographic memory, and had both an aptitude and willingness to read thousands of pages of financial reports for fun—even on his honeymoon.

Clearly, Buffett was always an extreme outlier. But the ultra-close-up nature of this book makes that hard to get into any perspective, and the only fun that the prose offers is the fact that it occasionally veers away from its one-thing-after-another chronology into infelicities and self-contradictions. What, for instance, does this mean?

In private, Munger tended to lecture either himself or his audience, making conversations with him like sitting in the back of a runaway stagecoach.

And surely "lessened", here, should be "lengthened:"

[Buffet's mother] Leila formed a much healthier relationship with her youngest child, Bertie, as the intervals between her rages lessened.

Or consider this: On page 137, in 1950, while a student at Columbia University, Buffett buys 350 shares of Geico. On page 165, in 1951 (you can see how this book grows to over 900 pages), Buffett's still buying Geico—as much as he can—in order to achieve his ambition of eventually owning 175 shares.

But the real problem with this book is that Schroeder never gets inside Buffett; never explains what he's thinking, instead making do with simply telling us what he's doing. Consider that first investment in Geico:

Geico seemed to Warren a no-lose proposition. That Monday, less than 48 hours after he arrived back in New York, Warren dumped stocks worth three-quarters of his growing portfolio and used the cash to buy 350 shares of Geico. It was an extraordinary move for the normally cautious young man.

Schroeder proceeds to give us a potted analysis of why Buffett thought Geico was cheap. What she never even attempts to explain is the much bigger question of why Buffett was so eager to place so many of his eggs in one basket. It's a typical omission: Whenever we need her to explain what's really going on, she goes AWOL.

Maybe things will improve in the later parts of the book, after Buffett sets up shop on his own—I'm only up to the end of Part Two, where Buffett has graduated from college, taken a stockbroking job with his father, and married a girl in the wake of what seems for all the world to be the most romance-free courtship of all time. Not that Schroeder is willing to hazard anything much on that front, either.

If you're obsessed with Everything Buffett, I'm sure you've gone out and started devouring this book already, and it doesn't matter what I say. But if you're someone who doesn't own shares in Berkshire Hathaway, or if you have only a passing interest in the man, I'm sure there are more productive uses of your time than plowing your way through 900 pages of Schroeder's uninspiring prose.

For starters, you could try reading past issues of Buffett's legendary letter to shareholders, which accompanies every Berkshire Hathaway annual report. It's much more interesting, and much better written, than just about anything in this book.