There’s no shortage of stuff you really should be learning inthis world, and no shortage of books about exactly thatsame stuff. Every bit of knowledge you could ever hope foris already waiting right there in a book somewhere. Or awhole shelf of books. Heck, you could probably fill an entireunderground parking garage with all the books that havebeen written on the subject of investing alone, and still findmore pouring out onto the ground when you climbed backout.The problem is that most of those books are boring andyou end up setting them down with a bookmark somewherearound page 25, never to return. Even with the best ofskills and intentions, I find that the writers of most booksabout stock investing cannot seem to get it right. They dragit out painfully or write paragraphs so dry and dense thatyou find yourself re-reading the same passage over andover for half an hour while your mind wanders off to moreinteresting pastures.JL Collins takes this old style of investment book writingand disregards it completely. He creates the stuff that yourmind wants to run to when it is tired of reading aboutstocks. Instead of esoteric equations about measuring astock’s alpha and comparing it to its beta, he compares theentire stock market to a large mug of beer and explainswhy it’s still worth buying even when it comes along withan unpredictable quantity of foam.He lights up the campfire and just starts telling stories,and if those stories just happen to be about exactly whatyou wanted to learn in the first place, your new knowledgeis a happy side effect.This is exactly what happened in real life a few yearsago, when Jim started writing a series of blog posts onwww.jlcollinsnh.com about good investing. I read them allas they came out, and they were so good I started referringmy own readers to them. The readers liked them so muchthey referred others. Their numbers reached thethousands, then the hundreds of thousands.Word kept spreading about the Stock Series, and stilldoes to this day, because it is something people actuallyenjoy reading. Sure, the author has the technical chops anddemonstrates them well in his own enviable financial life.But readers don’t keep coming back just to bask intechnical wizardry—they are there to enjoy the fire andhear a good story.I think that amazing response is what motivated Jim torewrite and expand his great Stock Series into this evenbetter book. The Simple Path to Wealth is a revolutionarybook on stock investing (and good finance in general)because you’ll actually read it, enjoy it, and then be able toimmediately put the lessons profitably into action with yourown money.You’ll be relieved to hear that you can be very successfulby holding only a single Vanguard fund over your entirelifetime. You can branch out and get a little fancier if youlike, but there is nothing to lose, and everything to gain, bykeeping things as simple as you can.Although very few people actually follow it, I have foundthat the road to a wealthy life really is simple and quiteenjoyable to follow, so it only makes sense that a bookabout it should have those same fine traits. This one does.