Vanguard has introduced generations of independent investors to the wealth-building might of the U.S. stock market. But it owes its existence to the visionary genius and dogged tenacity of one man—John C. Bogle, one of the last of a breed of principled and unbending financial legends.Over the years, Bogle’s prescient and fiery speeches to the burgeoning Vanguard staff have also become legend. Character Counts collects those speeches in one volume. More than just an insider’s portrait of the reasons behind Vanguard’s remarkable success, however, it is a fascinating oral history of the too-long-in-coming empowerment of America’s independent investor—and the take-no-prisoners attitude of the man who dedicated his life to making it happen.