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Binding: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 464
Publication Date: October 13, 2003
Sales Rank: 21515
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
The definitive volume on Enron's amazing rise and scandalous fall, from an award-winning team of Fortune investigative reporters.
There were dozens of books about Watergate, but only All the President's Men gave readers the full story, with all the drama and nuance and exclusive reporting. And thirty years later, if you're going to read only one book on Watergate, that's still the one. Today, Enron is the biggest business story of our time, and Fortune senior writers Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind are the new Woodward and Bernstein.
Remarkably, it was just two years ago that Enron was thought to epitomize a great New Economy company, with its skyrocketing profits and share price. But that was before Fortune published an article by McLean that asked a seemingly innocent question: How exactly does Enron make money? From that point on, Enron's house of cards began to crumble. Now, McLean and Elkind have investigated much deeper, to offer the definitive book about the Enron scandal and the fascinating people behind it.
Meticulously researched and character driven, Smartest Guys in the Room takes the reader deep into Enron's past-and behind the closed doors of private meetings. Drawing on a wide range of unique sources, the book follows Enron's rise from obscurity to the top of the business world to its disastrous demise. It reveals as never before major characters such as Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, and Andy Fastow, as well as lesser known players like Cliff Baxter and Rebecca Mark. Smartest Guys in the Room is a story of greed, arrogance, and deceit-a microcosm of all that is wrong with American business today. Above all, it's a fascinating human drama that will prove to be the authoritative account of the Enron scandal.
Amazon.com Review:
Like its subject, The Smartest Guys in the Room is ambitious, grand in scope, and ruthless in its dealings. Unlike Enron, the Texas-based energy giant that has come to represent the post-millennium collapse of 1990s go-go corporate culture, it's also ultimately successful. Penned by Fortune scribes Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, the 400-page-plus chronicle of the scandal digs deep inside the numbers while, wisely, maintaining focus on the "smart guys" deep-frying the books. The likes of paternal but disengaged CEO Ken Lay (dubbed "Kenny Boy" by George W. Bush, one of many prominent public figures with whom he rubbed shoulders), cutthroat man-behind-the-curtain Jeff Skilling, and ethically blind numbers whiz Andy Fastow vividly come to life as they make a mockery of conventional accounting practices and grow increasingly arrogant and bind to their collective hubris. They're not a likable lot, and the writers find it difficult to suppress their astonishment and revulsion with the crew who rapidly went from golden boys and girls of the financial world to pariahs when the bill finally came due. The authors' unrepressed sarcasms are more than often unnecessarily given the scope of the outrage. Enron's leading lights were or a time celebrated for their ability to concoct nearly unfathomable business schemes to hide mounting shortfalls and keeping track on their machinations can be a chore, but, by sticking hard to the story behind the fall, McLean and Elkind have reported and written the definitive account of the Enron debacle. --Steven Stolder
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
Actually read this a few months back but thought I'd pen this short review on the day Lehman brothers filed for Chapt 11, Merril Lynch bought for a bargain by BOA, and AIG "restructuring" (ie throwing everything it can overboard). But, I hear you cry, what does Enron have to do with merchant banks? Well if you read this excellent book, you'll find that by the end of its existence Enron was essentially a merchant bank. It traded risk (and made some handsome profits doing so). The original hard infrastructure ... Read More
Rating:  -
Very well researched account of the rise and downfall of Enron. It chronicles the start and the ultimate demise of this company, which never really had a great business model - (sorry Jeff Skilling). It is amazing that so many "smart" people did not understand basic business skills and the simple difference between economic and accounting gains. Jeff Skilling, a former McKinsey partner, should have stayed with the consulting firm where theory is safely differentiated from real world. Skillings' first mistake ... Read More
Rating: -
When one reads 'The Smartest Guys In The Room' there is one question that keeps recurring. How did no-one at Enron foresee the company's grizzly demise. The folly of mark to market accounting was reason enoough to expect certain problems, but the endless treadmill that Enron placed itself on concerning the stock price made those problems an inevitability.
Although Elkind and Mclean portray the story well, they really don't have to do much with the material to make a fantastic story of the blistering ... Read More
Rating: -
This is probably the best corporate bio of Enron you'll find, at least for now. Very readable, the pages turn quick and it never gets boring. Some of the technical accounting details were beyond me, but it wasn't difficult to understand the bottom line: These schemes were illicitly lining a few pockets with massive amounts of cash.
The amount of work that went into this account is mind boggling. I can't imagine the hours of conducting interviews and poring through complex legal and accounting documents ... Read More
Rating: -
An interesting story of how a corporate belief in hiring intelligent people, or at least people who boast they are intelligent, leads to hubris and eventual ruin.
When everything finally collapses, no one is responsible and no one did anything wrong. A telling tail of how smart people can convince themselves of things better than they can convince the world.
What might Enron have done differently? The authors feel that Enron's use of "mark to market" accounting (booking the entire profits ... Read More
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