‘Compelling, intensely readable, unsettling. An unforgettable story of greed, financial madness and moral decay’ Rory Stewart

‘An incredibly important and timely book, very much of its era. The Wolf of Wall Street with a moral compass’ Irvine Welsh

‘Astonishing, enraging, extremely funny and exquisitely sad – a magnificent exposé of the ‘masters of the universe’ whose greed imperils us all. I cannot recommend this book highly enough’ The Secret Barrister

*An outrageous, white-knuckle journey to the dark heart of an intoxicating world – from someone who survived the trading game and then blew it all wide open*

‘If you were gonna rob a bank, and you saw the vault door there, left open, what would you do? Would you wait around?

Ever since he was a kid, kicking broken footballs on the streets of East London in the shadow of Canary Wharf’s skyscrapers, Gary wanted something better. Something a whole lot bigger.

Then he won a competition run by a bank: ‘The Trading Game’. The prize: a golden ticket to a new life, as the youngest trader in the whole city. A place where you could make more money than you’d ever imagined. Where your colleagues are dysfunctional maths geniuses, overfed public schoolboys and borderline psychopaths, yet they start to feel like family. Where soon you’re the bank’s most profitable trader, dealing in nearly a trillion dollars. A day. Where you dream of numbers in your sleep – and then stop sleeping at all.

But what happens when winning starts to feel like losing? When the easiest way to make money is to bet on millions becoming poorer and poorer – and, as the economy starts slipping off a precipice, your own sanity starts slipping with it? You want to stop, but you can’t. Because nobody ever leaves.

Would you stick, or quit? Even if it meant risking everything?

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“A timeless classic that will change how you approach life. There is a billion-dollar education inside this book.”
—Shane Parrish, founder of Syrus Partners and Farnam Street

“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.

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