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This book is about the people behind some of the most (in)famous hedge funds. It recounts the successes and failures of hedge funds over the past six decades. The book covers the history of hedge funds and how they have evolved. The book credits Alfred Jones with creating the first hedge fund, although if you read Wikipedia you will find out that this is a somewhat contentious claim.

The overall history is outlined in the various stories that the book follows. The structure of the book is that each chapter looks at a particular hedge fund, or famous hedge fund manager, it then recounts some of that person's life with a keen note of wins and losses and what made them famous. It is fairly biographical and should be treated as an entertaining read. The idea of a hedge fund is explained in general, ie going long and short, but the exact details of what the latest hedge funds are doing is not printed here. Nor is it necessary that the minutiae of what the current hedge funds are doing should be featured in this book.

There is a lot of information on the web about hedge funds do, including wiki, but the biographical information on some of the key players is not as accessible as it is here. This book does a good job of presenting this information in a concise manner. If you enjoy reading about economics, finance or investing from a lay perspective then you should find this entertaining.