Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Why buy the book here when you can get it for $49 from the source?, January 4, 2006
Just go to www.poorcharliesalmanack.com
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24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Lollapalooza Effect, November 29, 2005
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
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: A True Story About the Ups and Downs From Wall Street to Real Estate Leading to Phenomenal Returns
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20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not what I expected, August 25, 2005
I am an ardent follower of Charlie Munger and have the utmost respect for his accomplishments. His investment record is nearly without parallel and his broad understanding of subjects beyond investing requires no further elaboration to those that are familiar with him. I bought this book hoping that it would be the Munger equivalent of the excellent compilation by Lawrence Cunningham, "The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America."
This book was not even close to what Cunnningham produced and I returned it. The book is a coffee-table style book that is presented like a middle-school textbook, with odd illustrations (in one instance, when the text referred to General Electric, they inserted a giant GE logo on the page). The book has excellent content in the form of original letters and transcripts of talks that Munger has given. But it reads much more like a tribute or toast to his accomplishments instead of a digest of his beliefs. Instead. why not focus on what he has said and done so that we can all learn from his example?
Certainly others have liked this book and, again, I am a huge fan of Munger, but this book disappointed me and I would not recommend buying it without first browsing through it in person.
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by Peter Bevelin
