A Global Life: My Journey Among Rich and Poor, from Sydney to Wall Street to the World Bank »

James D. Wolfensohn was president of the World Bank from 1995 to 2005. He and his wife, Elaine, have three children.

The autobiography of the larger-than-life, visionary financier and humanitarian who led the World Bank through one of its most intense and tumultuous decades in the struggle against global poverty

Publishers Weekly

Now 76 years old, Wolfensohn (Voice of the World's Poor) has had a rich and varied life as an investment banker, chairman of Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center, head of the World Bank, and finally advocate of peace as special envoy to the Middle East. The first third of the book is devoted to a fascinating chronicle of his early life growing up in a close-knit, middle-class Jewish family. His parents, who emigrated from Britain to Australia, faced tough financial times during the Great Depression and over-coddled the young Wolfensohn, expecting him to excel. Though he nearly flunked out of Sidney University, he ultimately earned a law degree and went on to receive an MBA at Harvard and become a U.S. citizen. He writes candidly of the mistakes he made during his long and successful career and the lessons they taught him. Married to his college sweetheart, with three children, he claims that the idea of writing this book, "grew out of a desire to leave… a record of the events that shaped me" for his adult children, and in the hope that younger readers might be encouraged to "follow at least some part of the path taken." (Oct.)

Prologue

1 A Long Way from New York 1

2 Setting Out 25

3 Stepping Up 45

4 Harvard 69

5 Learning My Craft in Australia 97

6 The Eurodollar Revolution 119

7 Becoming a Banker 135

8 The Outsider 155

9 Salomon Brothers and a New York-Based Career 179

10 On My Own 213

11 The Road to the World Bank 243

12 A Difficult Entry 267

13 Creativity and Change During the Clinton Years 309

14 A Fresh Look at Development 333

15 The Bush Years 357

16 Travel as Part of the Job 371

17 A New and Different Challenge 399

Epilogue 441

Acknowledgments 443

Notes 445

Index 449