50 Prosperity Classics by Tom Butler-Bowdon is an assimilation of fifty great financial classics that will help you “attract it, create it, manage it, and share it,” with “it” being prosperity. It’s part of the “50 Classics Series,” a series I’d never heard about until this edition, but it’s a clever distillation of many great works down into something shorter than Cliff Notes. For each of the fifty classics, there’s a brief salient quote, followed by a box of important facts (think: executive summary), then a few pages of commentary that reads like a book report. The book reads like a Who’s Who of important financial and business individuals from Warren Buffett to John Bogle, from Bill Gates to Guy Kawasaki, from Adam Smith to Peter Lynch. The books span the ages going as far back as 1778 with Adam Smith (the ones after that are P.T. Barnum in 1880 and Andrew Carnegie in 1889) and as recently as Suze Orman (2007).

I chose to take a look at Andrew Carnegie’s The Gospel of Wealth first, since it was the namesake and founder of my alma mater Carnegie Mellon University. How’s this for a quote to capture the message of the book:

“The man who dies rich thus dies disgraced.”

And the “In a nutshell” summery, written by the author, was:

The wealth creator has a moral obligation to enrich the lives of others in whatever way they can.

Then the author launches into three page book report of The Gospel of Wealth followed by a brief biography of Andrew Carnegie.

I’m a big fan of books where you get little stories and vignettes, something I mentioned in my review of Ken Fisher’s 100 Minds That Made The Market. This book is in that same vein, offering little stories about each author, summarizing their books into a one sentence and a “book report” that makes it easy and quick to digest. To be honest, it makes a great bathroom book if you’re into reading a lot about personal finance, wealth creation and management!

Money Magazine recently released the only 7 investments you’ll ever need and, surprise surprise, my favorite firm, Vanguard, was listed first choice for five of the seven. Their founder, John Bogle, was a major proponent of index funds and it shows in their offering, as almost all of Money’s choices were low-expense ratio index funds.

Need another reason to have a mutual fund account at Vanguard? (No, Vanguard doesn’t sponsor this site!)

Blue-chip US-stock fund: Fidelity Spartan 500 Index (FSMKX) because it replicates the S&P 500 with an expense ratio of 0.10% (coincidentally, Vanguard’s version, the Vanguard 500 Index Fund Investor Shares (VFINX) is 50% more expensive with a ratio of 0.15%).

Blue-chip foreign-stock fund: Vanguard Total International Stock Index (VGTSX) because of its solid performance, beating 90% of its peers, and because it’s an index fund with an expense ratio of 0.27%. Another Vanguard fund, the Vanguard FTSE All World Ex-U.S. ETF (VEU), was listed as an alternative.

Small-company fund: T. Rowe Price New Horizons (PRNHX) is an actively managed fund, one of the few actively managed funds they selected, and is “one of the most efficient of the actively managed crowd.” Considering it is actively managed, an expense ratio of 0.8% is pretty good, about half the average.

Value fund: Oh look, another Vanguard fund - the Vanguard Value Index (VIVAX) and its 0.2% expense ratio and a record that trumps 78% of its peers. Value funds go after investments that appear overlooked or beaten down and try earn a little off those cigar butts and dividends, rather than looking for growth potential.

High-quality bond fund: Vanguard Total Bond Market Index (VBMFX) snags this category with a 0.2% expense ratio. Bonds are good to be the rock in your portfolio to give you some grounding as your other investments shoot up and crash down.

Inflation-protected bond fund: This last category was won by Vanguard’s Inflation-Protected Securities Fund (VIPSX) and it’s 0.2% expense ratio (Vanguard’s index funds are ridiculously efficient). “Among TIPS funds, Vanguard Inflation-Protected Securities has several things going for it, including lower costs and better management than you would get if you assembled your own TIPS portfolio. While the fund returned 6.6% over the past five years, you shouldn’t expect it to make a pile of dough. Its job is to protect the money you already have.”

That’s a little maxim from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and one you should heed if you’ve been watching the stock market tank in recent months and wondering if you should cut loose. Don’t panic. Markets go up and markets go down and mainstream media is the business of selling sensationalism. Why do you think the news is always about murders and burglaries? Because the heartwarming stories are for Oprah.

Still panicking? Check out the latest Ben Stein column in Yahoo, written in his trademarked dry humor style, and enjoy the awesome simplicity that is his advice. Here’s my favorite excerpt:

5. Trust the major newspapers to know more than Warren Buffett.

Yes, Buffett’s the best investor in history, and says to stay in the market and buy index funds. He also says now is the time that stupid money is leaving the market.

But pay no attention to that fool! Pay attention only to some new young gunslinger at The Wall Street Journal or Barron’s who tells you it’s time to sell. Even pay attention when someone with no investing track record tells you to sell out of Berkshire Hathaway, one of the most successful investments of all time.

No, don’t trust Buffett or other “geniuses” like John Bogle. Trust whoever comes across as the smartest-aleck and most glib, “on whom assurance sits, as a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire” (to quote T.S. Eliot).

And if you’ve never heard of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, go borrow it from the library because it’s great humor (so much better than the movie!).