The Snowball, the first authorized biography of Warren Buffett, has been one of the most eagerly anticipated business books of the year. Published on Monday, the book is particularly timely because of Buffett's role in the credit crisis now roiling Wall Street, including Wednesday's purchase of a stake in G.E.

A team of Portfolio.com writers, continuing today with senior writer Jesse Eisinger, are reviewing the book in sections this week, and will be commenting on each other's reviews (here are parts one, two, and three, in case you missed them). Readers are invited to add their thoughts in the Comments section.

The New York Times' Janet Maslin has left the world of movie reviewing, and for that we are grateful (she liked The Phantom Menace, for God's sake). Unfortunately, the Times has allowed her to bring her relentless cheer to the book world. Earlier this week, she gave a glowing review to Alice Schroeder's heaping pile of a biography, all 838—960, if you count footnotes and the index—pages of it, of Warren Buffett.

It's called The Snowball. When I first heard the title, I thought, There's not a snowball's chance this will be any good. And it's not, unfortunately. Contra Maslin, Roger Lowenstein's elegant bio, Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist, is still the definitive volume.

I will second what Felix wrote and what Nelson hinted at. Schroeder was a former analyst on Wall Street and it shows. The book reads as if the editor forgot to edit because he or she was too busy rewriting. Schroeder emptied her notebook and out came a mix of cloying sentiment, irrelevant detail, and occasional perceptive observation. The insights are similar to the kind you glean from a Bob Woodward book—it's all there, but the reader must do the work because the writer isn't drawing the point clearly.

In picking up on Part Five of the book, which is entitled "The King of Wall Street," let me illustrate what I mean with an emblematic passage, the paragraph that begins Chapter 45. It's best to quote in its entirety. If you want to complain about its length, think how you will feel when you are schlepping the entire tome to your in-laws' over Thanksgiving:

"The 1980s would be an era of deals, deals, deals—most financed with debt, debt, debt. The Dow hadn't budged in 17 years. Grinding inflation had decimated corporate profits, yet companies had eiderdowned their payrolls so that every white-collar worker but the lowliest rested on a comfy cushion stuffed with flunkies. Executives treated themselves and their employees to golf courses and hunting lodges. They dribbled away much of their earnings in sloppy operations, loose engineering, and unthinking bureaucracy. By the early 1980s, stocks were on sale like polyester suits. Then, under Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, interest rates, recently an astronomical 15 percent, started to fall as inflation came under control. Astute money men noticed the bloated state of American business. With debt now cheap, would-be buyers of a company could use the company's own assets as collateral for a lender to finance its purchase—like getting a hundred-percent mortgage on a house. They buyer didn't have to put up any cash; it cost no more to buy a huge company than to set up a lemonade stand. A rush of financiers returned to Wall Street, intent on slaughtering the fatted calves using the carving knife of borrowed money. The merger boom had begun."