2000: What's the best book on Buffett's investment strategy?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: My name is Eric Tweedie from Shavertown, Pennsylvania. Thanks again for another great meeting.

During last year’s meeting, my wife picked up a copy of a book called “Buffettology” at one of the shops around town that is written by Mr. Buffett’s former daughter-in-law, a very well-written book, very interesting. And it attempts to outline the Warren Buffett approach to investing.

My question is, I don’t know if either of you gentlemen are familiar with the content or have read it. And if so, if you could comment on if you think it is a good outline of that type of investing.

My second question related to that, I wonder if you — if Mr. Buffett could comment on why you bought the original textile mill in Massachusetts, and if that represented an earlier phase, when you were more of a strictly Graham-style, value investor, versus your current investing style.

WARREN BUFFETT: Probably the best, I would say, the most representative book on my views is the one that Larry Cunningham has put together, because he essentially has taken my words and rearranged them in a more orderly — he’s taken from a number of years. And what he has put together there best represents my views.

We’ve got 20 years of annual reports or so, or more, on the internet, plus articles in Fortune, all kinds of things.

So it’s probably a bias I have. But I would — I like to think that I laid out those views better than somebody who’s rewriting them. But that’s — I’ll let you make that decision.

But I do think Larry’s done a very good job of taking a number of those reports and rearranging them by topic in a way that makes it a lot easier to read than trying to go through year after year.

And actually, you’ll have this book about Charlie, pretty soon, to read, too.

We’ve said what — we’ve said in these meetings, we’ve said in the annual reports, we’ve said exactly what we do.

And some of the books, I would say, try to take that and — because people are looking for mechanistic things or formulas or whatever it may be. They try to hold — they may try to hold out that there’s some secret beyond that. But I don’t think there probably is.

Charlie? You’ve read the books.

CHARLIE MUNGER: Oh, I skimmed that book. The —

I think what we have done all these years is, it wasn’t all that hard to do. And it’s not that hard to explain. All that said and done, I think a lot of people just don’t get it. (Laughter)

As Samuel Johnson said, famously, “I can give you an argument, but I can’t give you an understanding.” (Laughter)