Poor Richard’s Almanack

Franklin published an almanac every year from 1732 to 1758 under the invented name Richard Saunders — weather, tides, calendars, the practical reference of a colonial household — and packed the empty space between the entries with aphorisms. Those are what survived: terse, often borrowed and then sharpened, on thrift, industry, debt, sleep, drink, self-regard, and the compounding consequences of small habits. “A penny saved is a penny earned” and “early to bed and early to rise” come from here, along with several hundred less-quoted and sharper ones. Any modern edition is a selection from the twenty-six annual runs; the persona matters as much as the content, since Franklin used Poor Richard to teach a commercial middle class the virtues its own prosperity would require.

Why it’s on the list: Li Lu’s last section is biography — the lives, not the theories — and Franklin is the founding American instance of the practical self-improving temperament the whole list keeps circling back to. It is also the text Charlie Munger deliberately took his own title from, which is not a coincidence on a bibliography assembled by the investor Munger trusted with his family’s money.

Where I saw it: On Li Lu’s Recommended Book List, the 137-entry Himalaya Capital bibliography, in the section on Biography and Others. Kyle saved the list as two X posts that photographed only the value-investing section; this entry came out of the source PDF, which cites a Peter Pauper Press 1980 edition.

Connections

• Benjamin Franklin — the author behind the persona.
• Thrift — the central virtue, argued in one-line increments over twenty-six years.
• Wisdom — the aphorism as a delivery mechanism for it.
• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin — the long-form companion, already read.
• Poor Charlie’s Almanack — Munger’s homage, and the reason this title is familiar to investors at all.
• Li Lu · Himalaya Capital — the curator and the bibliography.