Poor Charlie’s Almanack

Book excerpt: From the legendary vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, lessons in investment strategy, philanthropy, and living a rational and ethical life. “Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up,” Charles T. Munger advises in Poor Charlie’s Almanack. Originally published in 2005, this compendium of eleven talks delivered by the legendary Berkshire Hathaway vice-chairman between 1986 and 2007 has become a touchstone for a generation of investors and entrepreneurs seeking to absorb the enduring wit and wisdom of one of the great minds of the 20th and 21st centuries. Edited by Peter D. Kaufman, chairman and CEO of Glenair and longtime friend of Charlie Munger—whom he calls “this generation’s answer to Benjamin Franklin”—this abridged Stripe Press edition of Poor Charlie’s Almanack features a brand-new foreword by Stripe cofounder John Collison. Poor Charlie’s Almanack draws on Munger’s encyclopedic knowledge of business, finance, history, philosophy, physics, and ethics—and more besides—to introduce the latticework of mental models that underpin his rational and rigorous approach to life, learning, and decision-making. Delivered with Munger’s characteristic sharp wit and rhetorical flair, it is an essential volume for any reader seeking to go to bed a little wiser than when they woke up.