That possibility—remote as some may say it is—hardly makes Bogle a historical artifact. At 83 years old and with a 1996 heart transplant behind him, his mind is crisp, and what the New York Times called his stentorian voice suggests vigor and vitality. This is a man who will go out sprinting and relevant.

I particularly enjoyed the section of the book where Bogle takes measure of how markets, the economy and U.S. society got to this point, with the simple verities of investing seemingly cast aside and crass profiteering now on center stage.

“Our ‘Gatekeepers’—the courts, the Congress, the regulatory agencies, the public accountants, the rating agencies, the security analysts, the money managers, the corporate directors, even the shareholders—largely failed in honoring their responsibilities to call out what was going on right before their eyes,” Bogle writes in the first section of the book.

For Bogle, good behavior and incentives to do the right thing are a function of corporate structure, and in this regard he returns again and again to the virtues of Vanguard, a mutually structured company that is owned by its fund holders and that runs its funds at cost. Again, he seems aware that his championing of Vanguard can be a bit annoying, and his caveats about that are effective and even a bit endearing.

But the deeper flavor of the narrative is one of optimism, which makes Bogle an unmistakably American figure. For me, the son of European immigrants who came to America full of hopes and dreams, that optimism goes to the heart of why I like the book so much and why investors really ought to read it.

America isn’t over, it’s just regrouping. And Bogle is one of the figures helping that process along.

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