Risk and Other Four-Letter Words

In these essays, retired Citibank chairman Wriston charts in petulant prose and lively detail mercantile, philosophical, political and industrial forces and events that have shaped American life. His incisive, often acerbic views emerge against a background of 19th century expansion; successive booms and busts; complicated banking regulations and government attempts to manage the economy (both of which he opposes); and crises over OPEC oil and underdeveloped-country debt. Wriston's basic tenet is that risk is the key to progress, bureaucracy its enemy. He lauds the current tendency to combine science and finance in order to create one worldwide financial marketplacetracing as an example a transaction involving a dozen countrieswith millions of dollars flashed anywhere in the world within seconds. February 19