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“I read all of them over and over. The book that probably had the most influence on me was Garfield Drew, who wrote an important book about odd-lot stock trading.7 I read that about three times. I read Edwards and McGee, which is the bible of technical analysis.8 I would go down to the library and just clean them out.” But when he found The Intelligent Investor, he read and reread it. “It was almost like he found a god,” said Truman Wood, his housemate.9 After careful study and thought, he had gone ahead and made a “value” investment on his own. Through a connection of his father’s, he had heard of a company called Parkersburg Rig & Reel, which he researched according to Graham’s rules. He bought two hundred shares.10

According to the catalog Warren had now picked up, the man who had become his favorite author, Ben Graham, was lecturing in finance at Columbia University. And David Dodd was there too. Dodd was associate dean of the Graduate School of Business, and head of the department of finance. In 1934 Graham and Dodd had coauthored the seminal text on investing, Security Analysis. The Intelligent Investor was the layman’s version of Security Analysis. Enrolling at Columbia would mean he could study with Graham and Dodd. And as Columbia’s catalog pointed out: “No other city in the world offers as many opportunities to become acquainted at firsthand with the actual conduct of business. Here a student may come into personal contact with the outstanding leaders of American business, many of whom give generously of their time to take part in seminars, institutes, and conferences…. Business establishments of the city cheerfully welcome groups of students as visitors.”11 Even Harvard could not offer this.

Warren now determined that he would go to Columbia. But it was almost too late.

“I wrote in August, about a month before school started, way past when you were supposed to do it. Who knows what I wrote? I probably wrote that I just found this catalog at the University of Omaha, and it said that you and Ben Graham taught, whereas I thought you guys were on Mount Olympus someplace just smiling down on the rest of us. And if I can get in, I’d love to come. I’m sure it was not a very conventional application. It was probably fairly personal.”

But in a written application, however unconventional, Warren could shape the impression he made more successfully than in a personal interview. The application wound up on the desk of David Dodd, who as associate dean was in charge of admissions. By 1950, after teaching at Columbia for twenty-seven years, Dodd had effectively become the junior partner of the famous Benjamin Graham.

A thin, frail, balding man who cared for a disabled wife at home, Dodd was the son of a Presbyterian minister and eight years older than Warren’s father. While Dodd may have been touched in some way by the personal nature of the application, it was also true that at Columbia, he and Graham were more interested in their students’ aptitude for business and investing than their emotional maturity. Graham and Dodd were not trying to create leaders. They taught a specialized craft.

Whatever the reason, after the deadline, and without an interview, Warren was accepted by Columbia.

16

Strike One

New York City • Fall 1950

Warren arrived in New York City alone. The only person he knew there was his aunt Dorothy Stahl, widow of the revered Marion Stahl. Otherwise, the motherly women to whom he usually attached himself were unavailable. His teachers and classmates at the business school would consist almost entirely of men. Unlike Penn, where his family had been only a couple of hours away, he was on his own. And his father was once again immersed in politics, running to regain his seat in Congress—this time managing the campaign himself. But even if he won, New York was a long way from Washington.

Warren had applied to Columbia too late to get into a university dorm, so he found the cheapest lodgings available: joining the YMCA for a dime a day and paying a dollar a day for a room at the Y’s Sloane House