Brian Gongol
Jack Bogle wrote his senior thesis on the (then-new) mutual fund industry. Then he went on to found the Vanguard Group, which is now the nation's largest low-cost mutual-fund company. Bogle believes that (a) investors are better-off in total-market index funds than in either individual stocks or actively-managed mutual funds, and (b) that a low-cost fund beats a high-cost fund any day. In this huge but eminently readable catalog of his speeches and writings over the last 50 years, he makes (over and over) the compelling case that most individual investors who try to beat the market will get themselves killed by sky-high costs in the process. It's a case that's extremely well-made, and it's the kind of advice that I wish someone had given me when I was 22.