Enough. by John C. Bogle

The latest book by the indomitable Jack Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group, takes its inspiration from a poem by Kurt Vonnegut in which he recounted a conversation with his friend Joseph Heller. Both men were guests at a lavish party thrown by a hedge fund manager, whom Vonnegut said made more money in one day than Heller’s Catch-22 (a bestseller) had made since it was published.

“Yes,” said Heller, “but I have something he will never have ... enough.”

Bogle’s book Enough. (the period is part of the title) doesn’t say a great deal more than Bogle’s earlier books and speeches—but given the ongoing financial crisis, it seems more timely than ever. Bogle reiterates his message that the financial industry adds no value to the economy, and that the fees it extracts from investors make the stock market a worse-than-zero-sum game. For everyone who beats the market over a certain length of time (and this is usually due to chance, he argues) someone else must lose. Bogle repeats his case that the rational response is to invest through low-cost broad-based index funds that will capture the overall returns of the market while costing the investor less than the average.

In Enough., Bogle combines the index-fund case with a more general plea for ethics in business and life. The chapter titles tell the story: “Too Much Counting, Not Enough Trust,” “Too Much Management, Not Enough Leadership,” “Too Much ‘Success,’ Not Enough Character.” Despite this emphasis, Bogle still doesn’t seem to have discovered the existence of socially responsible investing. But apart from this notable omission, Enough. is a solid, concise introduction to Bogle’s views on money and life.