as much + something + as anything

Question

In a lecture I heard, the speaker talked about a chapter in John Maynard Keynes's book, and then he said on that chapter,

I think you’ll find you’ll get as much wisdom from reading that as anything written in investments.

To my understanding, he was talking about this chapter as giving better wisdom than anything else written in investments.

Trouble is, in the many (online) dictionaries I searched, this construct "as much + something + as anything" means "equal, no less than". If applied to the text, the speaker seems to say that this chapter is equal in value to any other investments texts. By that, he seems to discount the piece of writing which he touted, and that simply doesn't make sense.

Anybody here care to share some wisdom on this construct? does "as much sth as anything" = "better sth than anything"?

Answer 1

No, the speaker says that if you read that, you will find equal wisdom to [the wisdom contained in] anything written in investments. Read the sentence in this way:

I think you’ll find you’ll get as much wisdom from reading that as [from reading] anything written in investments.

Parallel sentence structures license omission, but your speaker left too many dots for you to connect and it left you wondering. I would have at least kept the second from to avoid ambiguity.

Your speaker says that that particular text is as good as anything written in investments, so he is in fact complimenting the text. "Don't underestimate it, it is as good as any other text in the field."