Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger

A while back I read Charlie Munger’s “Poor Charlie’s Almanack”, and found the material itself (talks by Munger) mostly good, though the style in which it was edited and presented came across a bit cheesy and self-congratulatory.

This seems thematically similar. I’m not sure exactly who Peter Bevelin is, but he seems like a professional-businessman / hobbyist-scholar type who’s soaked up a lot of the common-sense thought-principles espoused by Munger and Warren Buffett (and glommed onto by many an acolyte) and added mixed in many fruits of his own learning besides.

The title is promising. Who doesn’t love the perpetual process it describes? The book is “the result of Bevelin’s learning about attaining wisdom” and it seems wide ranging, chewing through ideas across numerous different fields. None other than Nassim Nicholas Taleb called it “a wonderful book on wisdom and decision-making written by a wise decision-maker.”

It seems to focus fairly heavily on psychology and mental models, and seems like a compelling intro/summary of those areas; I worry it may lack depth but does seem to reflect boundless curiosity, and I can respect that! Reading an interview with Bevelin, I gather he learned and read and synthesized a ton of interesting material and assembled it here; as collections of wisdom go, this seems to be a strong one.

I did come across one fairly damning review which says it “reeks of self-published vanity”, that “reading it is not a good use of a serious thinker’s time”…which…unfortunate if true! But, given how many people seem to love it, I must remain undecided.