NEW YORK—American International Group Inc.'s latest chairman, Robert S. Miller, may be looking forward to his new role, but his previous experience with property/casualty insurance apparently was less than satisfying.

Mr. Miller was named to the chairman post last week following the resignation of Harvey Golub, who left amid a clash with AIG CEO Robert Benmosche.

Mr. Miller has had a long career as a turnaround expert, which he chronicled in a 2008 book, “The Turnaround Kid: What I Learned Rescuing America's Most Troubled Companies,” penned under the name Steve Miller. That work included an unhappy three-month stint as president of now-defunct insurer Reliance Group Holdings, beginning in late 1999.

In his book, Mr. Miller wrote that Reliance “was already in a tailspin” when its chairman, CEO and stockholder, Saul Steinberg, asked him for help. The company was losing more than $1 million a day and facing a $700 million debt load “without the resources to pay it.”

He took the job despite his opinion that “insurance isn't an exciting industry,” he wrote, because his previous position had ended and Reliance was in his wife's favorite city, New York.

Mr. Miller does not recall the experience fondly.

“I assumed I would have real power inside the company, since I'd report directly to Steinberg, and carry the lofty title of president,” he wrote. But he was given the cold shoulder and not permitted to accomplish anything, he notes.

He found himself excluded from the board of directors' executive sessions, as well as from working lunches with major decisionmakers, and had “almost nothing to do.” No one other than a secretary reported to him.

He voluntarily resigned from the position.

About a year after he left, he said, every officer and member of the board with the exception of him would face charges of wrongdoing from insurance regulators. It was “one of the least happy stations in my journey through corporate life,” Mr. Miller wrote.