The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger (Abridged) by Charles T. Munger (2005-05-04)

This book's vocabulary makes it very difficult to keep up with. However, you only pay 1/10 of what you get, this book is amazing. I recommend everyone at least try the book, knowledge is never a bad investment, but I also recommend you read it more than once. I would read this book once a year.

This book should be required reading for any business major. This book is more about business, it's a whole new way to look at life both professionally and personally. I would highly recommend that you read this book.

Read much of the book this week preceding Christmas 2005, pausing to read several reviews herein. Great lessons, presented in earnest, worth every dollar, however, only to he who truly reads with focused abandon. I believe Goethe said something like Truth Only Is Known By The Minority...explaining why some readers will not get it. I agree with most of Buffet-Mungerisms...only question I would ask is why not a single quotation from any translation of The Holy Bible? Great addition to thoughtful library quite equal to Franklin's Original Autobiography.

Charlie Munger's ideas are great no doubt. But this book is too lengthy. Ideas are repetitive as you move from one speech to another. If you can afford to pay $50 for a book then go ahead and buy it. Its proceeds are donated to a charity which is great. But if you are purely interested in Charlie's wisdom listen to his speeches on youtube. Book has same thoughts in a much much lengthier form.

I am a HUGE fan of Charlie Munger. Sometimes equal to and even more than Warren Buffett who I also greatly admire for both his general wisdom and his investment track record. I might mention that Charlie FANS should be sure to take a look at his YouTube clips of speeches at the University of Michigan and at USC.

That said, I wanted to buy this book. But saw only USED copies for sale. I was disappointed, but then in reading Wikipedia I discovered that the book is available NEW on the Internet directly from a site that apparently gives the proceeds to a Charlie charity at the Hunington Museum.

The site is PCA Publishing or Intermountain Books Inc. They have a toll free number. The books costs $49 NEW plus shipping.

This message is NOT spam. I have no financial interest in this information or this site. I just wanted the store customers to know they can get the books for less that I see the USED prices on the store today.

Also the related book "Seeking Wisdom" is also available NEW and for $28 which is also lower than the prices for used copies on the store.

I hope this information is helpful to FANS of Charlie Munger. Charlie would not admire people who pay more for USED items than they do for the same item new. At least I don't think he would

Despite achieving a cult-like status among a niche group of investors, I would dare to say that Charles Munger is one of the most underrated investors of our age, and a true original thinker. Warren Buffett has been the embodiment of Berkshire Hathaway's success, but Munger has in many ways supplied the synapses that made the company what it is today. Without Munger's influence there would have been no profits from holdings of Coca-Cola, Gillette and J&J, and no Buffett-quotes such as: "It's far better to buy a wonderful business at a fair price than a fair business at a wonderful price". Munger has in a way represented three of the most important investor skills; an analytical edge, a behavioural edge and freedom from institutional barriers.

The book's title ties into Munger's all-time role-model. Between 1733 and 1758, Benjamin Franklin published a hugely successful almanack. To some extent, Munger has taken the philosophies of Franklin to an extreme, not only as regards to compounding, but mostly in viewing the world through the binoculars of multiple disciplines. Munger's appreciation for "wonderful businesses" comes straight from Franklin's compounding experiment and praise for innovation as a way to a long-lasting competitive edge. The layout of the book consists of 11 writings, complimented with pictures and additional information. The speech at USC in 1994 would all by itself be enough to put Munger at a legendary status. For any serious investor it should without question be required reading. For people in general, the "Elementary, Worldy Wisdom" that Munger strives to acquire is never more eloquently described than in this speech. To him, learning has always been a lifelong endeavour.

Starting with his own investment partnership between 1962 to 1975 earning a compounded 19,8% vs. 5% for the Dow Jones, onto the years within Berkshire, Munger has put into practice a few, powerful ideas: a) Stay within your circle of competence but constantly strive to widen it. This has often been misunderstood about Berkshire. Despite mostly owning familiar businesses (at that time), they let thousands of ideas pass through their brains only to say "no thanks". This flow increases the circle of competence over time. b) You only have a few, truly valuable insights in your life. "Great investors bet very big when they have the odds. The rest of the time they don't. It's that simple, damn it!" Looking at Berkshire's record, the top ten investments have provided almost all of the accumulated wealth. c) The combination of quality and value. Previously, an investor either believed in Ben Graham's value methods or Phil Fisher's growth-framework. What Munger did was to define value not as a static multiple relative to your assets and earnings, but as a function of the likely longevity of a company's cash flow relative to today's market cap. d) The iron rule of life is that only 20% can be in the top-fifth. The average result in the stock market will be the performance of the index. It's quite hard for anybody to beat the market by significant margins as a stock picker by just being intelligent and working in a disciplined way. You need what Munger has referred to as "a mental latticework", where facts are hung together in a usable form. And above all, you need to constantly practice what he has once said was the most important attribute for his success: Rationality.

Poor Charlie's Almanack (PCA) is at first glance a book about the author himself. But as Munger is as fanatical as they come about certain ideas, the lessons a long-term investor can draw from this book are priceless. In terms of constructing a framework around investments, what's actually important and what's merely market-noise, and with the use of marvellous analogies, PCA leaves the reader with a strong feeling of fulfilment. For me, the feeling while reading this book years ago was "this is all one needs"! The rest is just up to basic arithmetic, a strong will and a shiver of good luck.

This is a review by eqtbooks.com

Poor Charlie's Almanack; The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger

This book gives us the opportunity to learn how one of the greatest financial minds of our day views the world. Amazingly Charlie shares not only his opinions but his thought process and belief system. The book walks you through how Charlie arrives at the decisions that have made him a billionaire. I continually study both Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett , including reading the Berkshire Hathaway annual letter to shareholders which is packed with so much timely insight I'm surprised they don't charge for it.

Some of my favorite thoughts and quotes, which are elaborated on in the book are:

Pg 6 - "Read all the time"

Pg 45 - The Lollapalooza Effect - Charlie coined this phrase as a way of describing an idea, concept or business strategy that literally grows exponentially due to favorable coinciding events.

Pg. 40 -"Be prepared, act promptly, in scale, on a few major opportunities."

Pg 48- Jessy Livermore, "Big money is made in the waiting"

Charlie then goes on to explain that he would sit on 10-20 million at a time in T-Bills just waiting.

Pg 49 - "It takes character to sit there with all that cash and do nothing. I didn't get to where I am by going after mediocre opportunities"

- "It's like looking for a horse that pays 50/50 and has a 3-to-1 chance of winning."

Pg 60 - "The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't" - Mark Twain

On Coumpound Interest:

"Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world" - Einstein

"Never interrupt it unnecessarily" - Munger

"...'tis the stone that will turn all your lead into gold...Remember that money is of a prolific generating nature. Money can beget money, and its offspring can beget more" - Benjamine Franklin

"If you took our top fifteen decisions out, we'd have a pretty average record. It wasn't hyperactivity, but a hell of a lot of patience. You stuck to your principles and when opportunities came along you pounced on them with vigor." - Munger

On page 61 - 64 there is an investment checklist that is a must read!

"There are worse situations than drowning in cash and sitting, sitting, sitting. I remember when I wasn't awash in cash and I don't want to go back. - Munger

"The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotations" - Isaac Disraeli

"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read a good book of quotations" - Sir Winston Churchill

Pg. 88 - "You need to have a passionate interest in why thing are happening. That cast of mind, kept over long periods, gradually improves your ability to focus on reality. If you don't have that cast of mind your destined for failure even if you have a high I.Q." - Munger

"Our game is to recognize a big idea when it comes along, when it doesn't come along very often. Opportunity comes to the prepared mind." - Munger

A good portion of the book is focused on the importance of multiple mental models and the lack of them in academia.

Another hot topic that shows up more than once is the importance of reading.

"In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn't read all the time-none, zero. You'd be amazed at how much Warren reads-and at how much I read. My children laugh at me, they think I'm a book with a couple of legs sticking out" Munger

On page 136 the book moves into 10 talks at schools, clubs and foundations that are packed with so much insight and tips on living a happy, healthy and prosperous life that I can't even go into it without adding another 10 pages to this review.

There are close to 50 books mentioned and referenced that I will list and provide links (and some comments) to on my Blog- The Real Estate Investors Blog at Bloglines

This book should be read and studied and kept as a reference tool. It may very well take several years for all the powerful concepts to be fully understood and another few years to work your way through Charlie's reading list, but trust me it will be a worth wile adventure and you will be a changed person shortly after commencing.

By Kevin Kingston, author of A 20,000% Gain in Real Estate

Wits and wisdom of Charlie Munger.

I learned a thing or two here and there from his stories and talks.

I particularly loved the chapter on modes of thinking. If you get one thing from this book then make sure you understand that "confirmation bias" can screw you up big time in life.

When this book first arrived, my first thought was,"Okay. This definitely is not a book to read in between meetings - it's a heavy one, that's for sure."

As I read, "Choose clients as you would friends," and "Read all of the time," I became ready to connect with who Charlie Munger and Warren Buffet really are.

Choose Clients as you would Friends:
That makes sense, because if you love whatever you're in business to do, and you're talking to a prospect, objections would be minimal, and you both would know that you have provided your client something that would make his or her life better.

Read All of the Time:
I'd have to say, "Go beyond just reading. Be a demanding reader, and be willing to reread your books, more than once, because if you've read them well, you are in a different place, and you deserve to continue to grow."

This is a great book for those who are sincerely asking, "How did he become who he is?"

Influenced by Cicero, Benjamin Franklin, Tom Sawyer, Charlie Munger's, "Poor Charlie's Alamanac" should appeal to those who prefer:

1. Biographies;
2. Social Commentaries; or,
3. Business Tools.

Poor Charlie's Almanack; The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger

This book gives us the opportunity to learn how one of the greatest financial minds of our day views the world. Amazingly Charlie shares not only his opinions but his thought process and belief system. The book walks you through how Charlie arrives at the decisions that have made him a billionaire. I continually study both Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett , including reading the Berkshire Hathaway annual letter to shareholders which is packed with so much timely insight I'm surprised they don't charge for it.

Some of my favorite thoughts and quotes, which are elaborated on in the book are:

Pg 6 - "Read all the time"

Pg 45 - The Lollapalooza Effect - Charlie coined this phrase as a way of describing an idea, concept or business strategy that literally grows exponentially due to favorable coinciding events.

Pg. 40 -"Be prepared, act promptly, in scale, on a few major opportunities."

Pg 48- Jessy Livermore, "Big money is made in the waiting"

Charlie then goes on to explain that he would sit on 10-20 million at a time in T-Bills just waiting.

Pg 49 - "It takes character to sit there with all that cash and do nothing. I didn't get to where I am by going after mediocre opportunities"

- "It's like looking for a horse that pays 50/50 and has a 3-to-1 chance of winning."

Pg 60 - "The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't" - Mark Twain

On Coumpound Interest:

"Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world" - Einstein

"Never interrupt it unnecessarily" - Munger

"...'tis the stone that will turn all your lead into gold...Remember that money is of a prolific generating nature. Money can beget money, and its offspring can beget more" - Benjamine Franklin

"If you took our top fifteen decisions out, we'd have a pretty average record. It wasn't hyperactivity, but a hell of a lot of patience. You stuck to your principles and when opportunities came along you pounced on them with vigor." - Munger

On page 61 - 64 there is an investment checklist that is a must read!

"There are worse situations than drowning in cash and sitting, sitting, sitting. I remember when I wasn't awash in cash and I don't want to go back. - Munger

"The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotations" - Isaac Disraeli

"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read a good book of quotations" - Sir Winston Churchill

Pg. 88 - "You need to have a passionate interest in why thing are happening. That cast of mind, kept over long periods, gradually improves your ability to focus on reality. If you don't have that cast of mind your destined for failure even if you have a high I.Q." - Munger

"Our game is to recognize a big idea when it comes along, when it doesn't come along very often. Opportunity comes to the prepared mind." - Munger

A good portion of the book is focused on the importance of multiple mental models and the lack of them in academia.

Another hot topic that shows up more than once is the importance of reading.

"In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn't read all the time-none, zero. You'd be amazed at how much Warren reads-and at how much I read. My children laugh at me, they think I'm a book with a couple of legs sticking out" Munger

On page 136 the book moves into 10 talks at schools, clubs and foundations that are packed with so much insight and tips on living a happy, healthy and prosperous life that I can't even go into it without adding another 10 pages to this review.

There are close to 50 books mentioned and referenced that I will list and provide links (and some comments) to on my Blog- The Real Estate Investors Blog at Bloglines

This book should be read and studied and kept as a reference tool. It may very well take several years for all the powerful concepts to be fully understood and another few years to work your way through Charlie's reading list, but trust me it will be a worth wile adventure and you will be a changed person shortly after commencing.

By Kevin Kingston, author of A 20,000% Gain in Real Estate

Charlie Munger is a talented and smart man. He has been a successful lawyer and investor. He is also one of the wealthiest man in the US and is a famous partner of Warren Buffet.

The book combines much of his wisdom and insights and summarizes them in a highly readable format.

I have two issues with this book which prevents it from becoming a must read.

1)The book is made up of expensive glossy paper with lot of pictures and drawings with large typeface. The result is a book that is needlessly large, very heavy, and expensive and meager in content relative to a more normal autobiography. The book was not designed and priced to sell, and it seems to have sold poorly.

2)Charlie Munger praises himself (or have others praise him) way too much in this book. About 15-30% of this book is dedicated to the "Great Charlie". He calls himself "genius" at least couple of times. He also has many endorsement of his greatness and genius by other talented people such as Bill Gates. That's too bad, because Charlie is not only a great intellectual with awesome insights into practically everything, but he is also seemingly a man of great integrity and charity.

I am a great fan of Charlie Munger and I am glad to have read this book and absorb much of Charlie's wisdom. I just think the two major flaws of this book made it less than great.

This is a collection of transcripts from talks Charlie Munger has given at universities and charity foundations, etc. over the years. At YouTube you can find video recordings of some of Charlie's talks transcribed in this book.

A recurrent theme of Charlie's is the need for multi-disciplinary thinking when trying to understand complex problems. Charlie recommends you know the fundamental ideas of both the hard and soft sciences (e.g. physics, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, as well as psychology, sociology, etc.), so when you are faced with an unusual or difficult problem in business or elsewhere you will be better equipped at breaking the problem down into sub-components that are easier to understand and respond to.

Another theme of Charlie's is to avoid bad things. This is particularly useful advice in investing because the pursuit of investment success is a very difficult task, but the avoidance of failure is rather easy and with that, success often comes as a byproduct.

This is an interesting and useful book albeit also quite mysterious because Charlie insists that his pupils / audience must 'reach' for the wisdom themselves so it will sit better with them. However, I think Charlie should have given more detailed examples of his thoughts because they often come out as rants and the audience must also reach too high for the wisdom which therefore eludes many people. In comparison, Warren Buffett's teachings are very simple and crystal clear. Another slight complaint I have about this book is the design. The main text is continually being interrupted with fancy magazine'ish quotes which makes it confusing to read. For these reasons I have deducted a star.

If you are looking for a how-to-invest guide I would suggest you first read Phil Fisher's book 'Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits', which gives more hands-on advice on how to assess the quality of a company.

PS: This review is for the expanded third edition.

This book is really amazing. Definitely one of the top 5 or 10 best business books that you could read in your lifetime.

Charlie Munger, multi billionaire Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, shares his inner most thoughts, ideas, decision making processes...this is how you really make money. It makes those other "financial experts" (the people you see on tv with books, boardgames, spouting wisdom such as "pay yourself first", "save and invest 10% of your income") look like a bunch of kindergartners. They've made the bulk of their money selling books, tapes and seminars.

Munger's on the Forbes 400, he doesn't have to sell books to make money. I think the public is very lucky, just to get a glimpse into his mind.

It's a very dense book, 500+ pages, it's not something that you can read on a weekend and apply monday morning. Cialdini's book "Influence" is pretty much a pre requisite, you've got to be familiar with some of the key pyschological principles to get any usage out of this book.

His mental models approach to business and investing will give you a huge edge in life. You'll come up with answers that no one else has.

It reminds me of what Jay Abraham teaches (a big marketing consultant from California). He talks about tunnel vision vs funnel vision, and that most people who spend their whole lives in a particular industry, tend to do about plus or minus 10-20% of what everyone else in that industry does. You have to go outside of your industry for breakthroughs.

It's a similar thing here, what they teach you in college is terrible. Everyone is walled off from one another, deparments tend to overuse their own models and underuse important ones that could be right down the hall.

I think Munger is being nice in his critique of higher learning. What they teach is just daffy, I have an undergrad degree in finance, and all I read about was "rational man".

There's no people in any business texts. No one lies, cheats or steals. There's no personality clashes. Imagine being in a business class and asking the professor..."but, there's no people in any of these books. Can you bring in a pyschology professor to discuss how personalities clash in business or the misjudgements that people make?". It's all terribly mistaught, nothing is cohesive or interconnected in any way.

For example, in finance, you see all these people killing themselves trying to explain the latest real estate bubble. Straining, straining..is it a bubble, or isn't it?? Is it really going to pop?

I think the fatal flaw academics make is thinking that the deeper they go in their own field, the more answers they'll come up with. Maybe, maybe not. But they should be looking outside of their own field for some answers.

In the case of the real estate bubble, you can run down the pyschological principles laid out, and you've got a nice model to explain it.

-People are naturally overconfident and overly optimistic about everything.
-Aided by social proof, you see everyone else buying real estate and making money. You read about Joe and Jane Smith in the paper and they just made $50,000.
-Rising prices create a certain amount of conditioning in the buyer. In the big stock bubble of the 90's, everyone got conditioned to "buy the dips" because prices always went back up.
-Aided by authority (Cialdini explains these principles beautifully). A learned professor comes out and says real estate is going to keep going up. UCLA's Anderson School does a 2 year study, and says, "yes, prices will continue to rise". Well, if Anderson says it, it must be good.

Then prices start to dip, and you've got simple denial. People don't want to believe the truth. "Soft landing" is a nice word for denial and wishful thinking. And then ultimately the pain gets too great, and you have to sell.

I'm sure there are plenty of other factors involved (A big lollapalooza in Mungers terms). The timing can be complicated. But you'll never get that answer going deeper into a finance book.

The book leaves you wanting alot more. More examples would have been nice.

"Invert" I still don't quite get. A quote from the book.."many problems can't be solved forward". That could be a profound answer, but you don't know what to do with it.

Still, an amazing book. A must have for any business/investing library.

I remember reading a quote long back, to the effect, Mankind has progressed not by a few big moves but using a big bag of small tricks.

This book is Munger's big bag of small tricks.

Most of mathematics and science evolved by adding solid tested ideas one above to the other. (Species evolved this way too.)
This, Munger refers as the
organizing ethos of hard science. Basically, every new theorem should build upon a proven theorem and must not contradict anything proven before.

When you add one idea and another in a precise way, you either get an unexpected new idea (a theorem, not intuitive) or a paradox
that prompts you in another direction.

Munger points out that the quality of your solutions and even your delineation of the problem will depend on
what tools you have to solve it. So when the tools you have are not good enough to characterize a problem, your attempts
are going to be futile.

So to avoid the 'man with a hammer' limitation, Munger advices build a tool chest with all kinds of tools ever used on any problem.
And if possible use a checklist to make sure to try out all tools on a new situation until you find a match.

For instance, the entire investing success of Buffett and Munger can be summarized in a handful of tools - power of compound interest,
tax free compounding, no-brainer decisions, power of 20 year investment in companies that grow earnings 10% a year, power of buying on a discount (safety margin), dividend reinvestment, the need to ignore market quotations and float as investment money.

Each of these ideas compounds to another until the combination becomes powerful to make a billionaire or two over time.

This book should inspire people to patiently collect working ideas and build working solutions beyond investment arena.

Must read.

The majority of the book is mostly a compilation of his Top 10 public speeches, but with many side business anecdotes and references. The highlight however is with respect to his "Mental Models" with some new material. As Munger says, without the Models you're doomed with the "Man with a Hammer" syndrome. Just as you need several tools to both be a competent individual and to provide something back to society, you also need the tools to be a good investor as you are rarely the smartest one in the room.

In addition, the recommended readings (if adhered to) are an education in themselves and are primarily the basis for many of the Mental Models presented, but entail so, so much more. Whether you are interested in investing, or not, one can learn many life lessons from the mental model teachings in Poor Charlie's Almanack.

I'm not gonna praise Munger's wisdom again. Other reviewers did the job very well. After having read both books, Poor Charlie's Almanack and Seeking Wisdom, I highly recommend starting with Seeking Wisdom. It's shorter without lacking depth nor scope, but gives a great 'introduction' into Munger's (and Buffet's) way of thinking. Straight to the point. After reading Seeking Wisdom you probably long for more Munger wisdom. Then go for Poor Charlie's Almanack. Enjoy reading, re-reading ... and soak the wisdom of one of the finest thinkers ever walked on this planet.

This book has been approved by warren Buffett himself and is definitely worth reading. I think that every man has a desire for wisdom and no one wishes day and night: "please I want to be a donkey and never read a book..." (If someone is like that no problem,I just hope it is not you).
This book has the same cost of one pair of expensive shoes but it will remain in you for the rest of your life. Be smart,go for wisdom and better choices in life.

This is an absolutely fabulous book. I love it. I am an avid follower of Charlie Munger, going to the annual meetings etc. So I thought that this might only be a rehash of existing speeches and talks, which admittedly form the bulk of the text. But it is much more--Munger has revised and added to some of his talks. The editor, Peter Kaufman, has added other materials. Munger's son's comments about dinner table conversations with his children (and grandchildren) are worth the price of the book.

Simply, the book imparts the wisdom of Charlie Munger, from the dinner table to the boardroom.

Now to the bad: as marvelously as the book portrays Munger's wisdom, graphically it is one of the silliest books I have ever seen. The illustrations and pictures range from trite to dreadful. They are poorly chosen, poorly reproduced, sophomoric at best: a picture from Star Trek to illustrate second order consequences, inane caricatures of Munger and Buffett, etc. Visually, it is ghastly.

Nevertheless, this is still a 5 star book. So, here is a new Franklinesque proverb: Don't judge a book by its illustrations.

Entertaining hagiography of a smart, fortunate investor. There is a lot of good stuff in here. In fact, most of the good stuff is repeated multiple times, in case you are a bit dim-witted like me. But it does eventually sink in. What I liked the most were the anecdotes and letters and pithy aphorisms. The little bite-sized biographies of famous people and businessmen was great, too.

What gets a bit grating is the whole lovefest for this man. He is deified here ad nauseum. Amazing to see a capable, smart investor in the stock market get this kind of treatment.

Not worth full price. Look for it on sale or free on the internet.