From Financial Times's global finance correspondent, the incredible true story of the iconoclastic geeks who defied conventional wisdom and endured Wall Street's scorn to launch the index fund revolution, dematizing investing and saving hundreds of billions of dollars in fees that would have otherwise lined fat cats' pockets.
Fifty years ago, the Manhattan Project of money management was quietly assembled in the financial industry's backwaters, unified by the heretical idea that even many of the world's finest investors couldn't beat the market in the long run.

The motley crew of nerds - including John McQuown, a bull-headed computer-obsessive, economist wunderkind Gene Fama, a humiliated industry executive named Jack Bogle, and the avuncular former WWII submariner Nate Most - succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Passive investing now accounts for more than $20 trillion, equal to the entire gross domestic product of the US, and...