#202 A Few Lessons From Warren Buffett

**David Senra** (0:00)
Customer Review.
A Guide to Both Wisdom and Sherlock Holmes.
We Sherlock Holmes fans, readers and secret imitators need a map. Here it is. Peter Bevelin is one of the wisest people on the planet.
He went through the books and pulled out sections from Conan Doyle's stories that are relevant to us moderns. A Guide to Both Wisdom and Sherlock Holmes.
It makes you both wiser and eager to re-read Sherlock Holmes.
That was a review from Amazon and it's also the way I discovered the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is A Few Lessons for Investors and Managers from Warren Buffett and was written and put together by Peter Bevelin. And that review was written by Nassim Taleb. I've read a bunch of Taleb's books. I highly recommend them. They're some of my favorite books. Fooled by Randomness, Black Swan, Anti-Fragile, Skin in the Game, The Bed of Procrustes. And so I had the idea one day, I was like, well, what are the books that he likes to read? If I like reading his books, like what are the books that he likes to read? So I was going through and he writes a bunch of reviews, good and bad, on Amazon of the books that he reads. And so the title of the book that Taleb was reviewing there is A Few Lessons from Sherlock Holmes. I was like, what is that? That stuck out. So I ended up clicking on the Amazon author page of Peter Bevelin. And then I realized, oh, wow, he wrote a few other books. He's got A Few Lessons from Sherlock Holmes. He's got the book, I'm Holding My Hand, A Few Lessons for Investors and Managers. And then he has probably arguably his most famous book, which is Seeking Wisdom, From Darwin to Munger. And so I started to click on the product description of his book, Seeking Wisdom. And I just want to pull out a little excerpt real quick from the product description. So it says, his quest for wisdom originated partly from making mistakes himself and observing those of others, but also from the philosophy of super investor and Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman, Charlie Munger. And then this is what made me just order all of Peter's books, a man whose simplicity and clarity of thought was unequal to anything Bevelin had seen. And that sentence describes, that's basically how I feel about Charlie Munger. I think he might be the wisest person I've ever come across. And so then I read Taleb's review of that book, Seeking Wisdom. He says, a wonderful book on wisdom and decision making written by a wise decision maker. This is the kind of book you read first, then leave by your bedside and reread a bit every day. Let me pause right in front of in the middle of his review, because I was going to say the exact same thing to you about the book that I hold in my hand. It's like a series of essays. You can read it. It's like less than 100 pages. You could read it in a day if you want. But I think the value is just keeping it out somewhere on a table, your bedside, wherever, and just picking it up and maybe reading, you know, for five, 10 minutes, and then thinking about, you know, what you read, and then doing that consistently. So let me go back to this wonderful book on wisdom and decision making written by a wise decision making decision maker, rather. This is the kind of book you read first, then leave by your bedside and reread a bit every day so you can slowly soak up the wisdom. It is sort of Montaigne, but applied to business. That's if you've ever read Telop's books, he mentions Michel de Montaigne, probably pronounced that incorrectly, several times, somebody he admires. So sort of Montaigne, but applied to business with a great investigation of the psychological dimension of decision making. I like the book for many reasons. The main one is that it was written by a practitioner who knows what he wants, but not an academic. Enjoy it.
Okay, so that leads this to this book. Eventually, I haven't read the other two books. This is the only one of Peter's books I've read so far. I will do podcasts on those books in the future. I want to start off with, he tells us why. Well, first of all, I like that he starts his book with a quote and then ends it with a quote. Actually, you know what? Let me read. Let me read the first one because I think it's fantastic.
This is how he begins the book. Now, now it's a funny thing about life. If you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.