Timothy F. Geithner, the former Treasury secretary, drew a large and respectful crowd last Wednesday at a Barnes & Noble store in Manhattan, where he was publicizing “Stress Test,” his new memoir about the financial crisis. Mr. Geithner left little to chance at the event: It consisted of a highly scripted chat with a friendly interviewer who screened audience questions. After an hour, Mr. Geithner was whisked from the building.

The audience seemed to buy his story: He acknowledged that the 2008 bank rescues he helped engineer were unfair and offensive because they rewarded the very people who had created the disaster, but he defended them as stabilizing the economy and, ultimately, helping all Americans.

“We weren’t perfect,” he said. “It was messy. We had to learn as we went along.”

Mr. Geithner wrote his book, he said, to honor the people who worked with him during the conflagration at both the Federal Reserve and at the Treasury.

But he had other goals: to make clear that he felt his course was the right one for the nation, to apologize for not having seen the crisis coming as a financial overseer and, perhaps most important, to convince people that he was not in the pocket of the banks he rescued.