Product Description

What went wrong with American business at the end of the 20th century? Until the spring of 2001, Enron epitomized the triumph of the New Economy. Feared by rivals, worshipped by investors, Enron seemingly could do no wrong. Its profits rose every year; its stock price surged ever upward; its leaders were hailed as visionaries. Then a young Fortune writer, Bethany McLean, wrote an article posing a simple question – how, exactly, does Enron make its money? Within a year Enron was facing humiliation and bankruptcy, the largest in US history, which caused Americans to lose faith in a system that rewarded top insiders with millions of dollars, while small investors lost everything. It was revealed that Enron was a company whose business was an illusion, an illusion that Wall Street was willing to accept even though they knew what the real truth was. This book - fully updated for the paperback - tells the extraordinary story of Enron's fall.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10121 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 464 pages

Review
...the most comprehensive picture yet of how the company went off the rails. The sheer accumulation of detail makes it possible for the first time to understand how Enron got away with its blend of hubris and incompetence for so long. . . This is more than a business story. It is also about what can happen to any institution when weak and complacent leadership allows itself to be swept along by strong vested interests and the mood of the times. (Richartd Lambert, ex editor of Financial Times and member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee )

About the Author
Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind are Fortune senior writers. McLean's March 2001 article in Fortune, “Is Enron Overpriced?,” was the first in a national publication to openly question the company’s dealings. Elkind, an award-winning investigative reporter, has written for The New York Times Magazine and The Washington Post.

Customer Reviews

They're right - this is The Book! of all others
When I took delivery of this book I'd already read - and given good reviews to - two other books on Enron. So why a third? To semi-quote Josh Lyman, 'That's not being a fan, that's having a fetish.' So I settled to read this one out of a sense of 'you bought it, you read it.' And, whaddaya know, I couldn't put the darned thing down. Being two books ahead of the curve, I knew the story, knew the players - and yet this account had me glued. Why? well, as they say if you watch the video by the same name (also highly recommended) it's essentially a human tragedy, and the authors here manage to handle a huge cast of tragic characters (that's not meant to invite pity, folks) with extraordinary skill. The inevitable teach-ins about how the various scams were run are managed effortlessly. The style is immaculate. There's a sense of fairness running through it, which makes their moral outrage - when delivered - all the more compelling. The US of A had, for the past couple of generations, produced historians who write like angels; this two stand firmly in that tradition.

So, for once, believe the blurb on the jacket; if you have only one book to read, not just about Enron but about the hubris of the past decade, make it this one.

Jaw-dropping
Not having read any other books about Enron, I came to this one not knowing what it was they were supposed to have done and ignorant of how it had all worked out. The book was published in 2003, so it doesn't cover the recent death of Enron founder Kenneth Lay, or the court verdict on former COO Jeff Skilling (guilty of 19 out of 28 charges). But it does do a fantastic job of explaining how a bunch of arrogant MBAs made a global phenomenon out of a company that didn't earn much cash and wasn't very good at providing the service its customers paid for. The title is bitterly ironic: Enron prided itself on its cleverness, but if stupidity has something to do with consciously walking towards self-destruction when you should absolutely know better, then the architects of Enron were phenomenally stupid.

I came to this book knowing little about corporate finance, and the authors are expert at doling out just enough information so that you can follow the insanely complicated financial transactions that made Enron appear to be far more substantial an entity than it really was. The characters are a fascinating rogues' gallery of people I wouldn't trust to sell fried dough out of a handcart on Boston Common: Skilling, arrogant, aggressive and downright unpleasant; Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow, blithely skimming off millions from the deals he oversaw that enabled Enron to borrow money from itself and chalk it up as earnings; Kenneth Lay, endlessly complacent and blissfully untroubled by the fact that his company was built on illusions practically from the start. My favourite moment of high comedy is when, just as the company is beginning to crumble, Lay gives a speech to Enron employees, reassuring them that they'll ride out the current crisis. During the ensuing Q&A, he is handed a question from the audience: "I would like to know if you are on crack. If so, that would explain a lot."

This is a brilliant and shocking book, and a vitally important one because if a company like Enron can become so big so quickly, on the basis of so little actual achievement in the way of providing services, then capitalism is a lot more unhealthy than many of us had begun to suspect.

Simply Brilliant - a must read if the collapse of Enron interests you
As someone from the media industry, when the Enron scandal was among us, I noted with unhinged irony how books, literature and exposés on the failed giant were simply mushrooming as the subject itself was in ruins. I wondered if there would ever be a book we could describe as the complete package. I am positively delighted to observe that this book is it.

The authors Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind read between the lines, probed and told the story with the sort of brevity and authoritative panache that few Enron insiders have managed, let alone mainstream observers. It would be prudent to remember that McLean, as a reporter, first asked the question about what makes Enron tick; something which had been troubling analysts in certain quarters for a while back in 2001.

Her probing mind and objective treatment of the subject is well reflected in this exceptional account following Enron's collapse. The authors promised to chart the "amazing rise and scandalous fall or Enron", and I feel that they have delivered.

This book is not one-dimensional, it is multi-layered. Whistle-blowing, leaked emails, hidden trading fiascos, evoking of the Fifth Amendment by Enron executives, overseas misadventures, deception, a culture of greed and human tragedy have all been treated at length. Fragile egos of its executives, traders' cockiness and even idiosyncrasies of the egregious Jeff Skilling (CEO of Enron) have been described in considerable detail. The brilliance of this work is that authors' insight into the minds of the Enron executives against a backdrop of the company's wider culture helps the reader understand what ultimately triggered its downfall.

I am inclined to think that Smartest Guys in the Room, is the best and the most definitive book on the Enron fiasco till date and it would take some Herculean effort to better it. It's a must read if the Enron scandal interests you, hit you or intrigues you. If you wish to know about the episode for the very first time, look no further than this riveting account.