"Spreading the Risks: Insuring the American Experience."

By John A. Bogardus Jr. with Robert H. Moore

Published by Posterity Press Inc., Chevy Chase, Md.

Available from www.spreadingtherisks.com.

$35

No wonder it took John A. Bogardus Jr., the retired chairman and chief executive officer of former broker Alexander & Alexander Inc., more than 13 years to write "Spreading the Risks."

His initial plan was to write the history of A&A, which once was the world's second-largest insurance brokerage, but that project morphed into a 408-page overview of the American insurance industry and its roots.

Much of the well-documented book, written with former colleague Robert H. Moore, uses A&A as a prism through which readers can view the development of the insurance industry in the United States during the past 200-plus years.

With telling detail, the authors explain how the concept of risk has evolved in the 20th century from the initial need to protect property from fire and weather-related losses, through the industrial revolution to the current computer-driven age.

For example, technological innovations such as the development of the automobile spurred the need for specialized policies. Inventions also led to exclusions: The Mutual Life Insurance Co. of New York, for example, excluded death by electricity from a life policy written for Thomas A. Edison.

Meanwhile, societal changes, such as the increasing acceptance of the legal concept of liability-culminating in current problems of asbestos and environmental impairment liability-fueled the need for buyers to find ways to protect themselves from litigation.

The authors deliver on their promise to chronicle the history of A&A, which two brothers established in rural West Virginia in 1899. Mr. Bogardus joined A&A in 1950 as a trainee and rose through the ranks, retiring as chairman in 1988 and as a director in 1995.

Detailed chapters tracking A&A's growth and transition to a public company in 1982 are less interesting than those that describe "the chicanery and conflict" A&A found at London-based broker Alexander Howden & Swann Ltd. A&A acquired Howden in 1982 only to learn its so-called "Gang of Four" had "used overseas personal accounts to divert funds for private use," the authors said. Coping with those problems cost A&A executives millions of dollars in personal and financial resources and offered some insights into problems with Lloyd's of London's operating structure during this period.

A&A's independent operations ended in 1997, when Aon Corp. merged the brokerage into its own operations.

This highly personalized account will be of great interest to agents and brokers as well as to insurance company executives.

Risk managers, meanwhile, may enjoy learning about the history of the industry, as well as about current topics such as the growth of alternative risk transfer mechanisms.