This short book is the closest thing we have to a history of the fledgling financial risk management industry. Despite the title, it isn't about financial risk management. Rather, it is about the events that transpired since the early 1970s—oil shocks, floating currencies, the emergence of derivatives markets, RAROC, financial blow-ups, Basel and such—that helped motivate the emergence of financial risk management.

The author, David Shirreff, is a journalist who has had affiliations with the Economist and Euromoney. He was also one of the founders of Risk Magazine. This work has lent him a front-row seat on the events he describes. His writing is fantastic, which makes the book a pleasure to read. As a professional, I feel his explanations sometimes oversimplify. There is also a minor factual error here or there. The author is a journalist not a historian, after all. Consider these minor quibbles.