Fidelity Investments has more than 8 million individual and corporate accounts worth $400 billion, making it the largest mutual fund company in the country. But for all its power and influence, Fidelity remains a largely unexamined institution.

Fidelity's World takes readers behind the polished public relations image and examines the private faces of Fidelity: the personalities of the two eccentric but little-known men who built the empire, the people they recruited to turn their ideas into reality, and the methods - sometimes subtle, occasionally brash and brutal - that they have used to remake their industry and to reshape the investing habits of millions of Americans.

The millions of Americans who invest in mutual funds generally do so because they think it is a relatively safe way to invest, but Fidelity's World will make them think twice about that assumption and is for that reason required reading for those trying to protect their life's savings.