Entertainment

On my trip across America, one of my favorite stops was in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Coming fresh from the streets of New York City, I think I used to say R-Can-Zas, like Kansas with an R in front. Rocks and boulders lay strewn all over the sides of the road. Every so often a huge gaping canyon had been dug into the earth to excavate limestone, sandstone, granite or marble. There was a lot of rock quarrying going on. Some canyons were full of fresh, clear water, looked like small lakes, and were tempting enough to invite summer frolicking under the hot sun. The air is so dry that it will rob the moisture from your skin. Arkansas may be rock country, but it’s not barren of books.

The field of operational risk management is still relatively new.  Last year, I thought about creating a risk textbook and shopping it to publishers like Pearson or Wiley because I have not been able to find a single risk textbook for classroom use either at the introductory or advanced level. When I examined that route more thoroughly, I realized that it would not work for me or my readers mainly because of the time involved to publish a book and the price the publisher would set for such a volume. Then there is the more elementary issue that most of my writing has immediacy, examining current events within the broader framework of risk, governance, policy, and law.