The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron
by Bethany McLean, Peter Elkind
book data
466 ratings,
3.86
average rating, 90 reviews
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published
September 28th 2004
(first published 2003)
by Portfolio Trade
binding
Paperback, 464 pages
isbn
1591840538
(isbn13: 9781591840534)
description
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...more
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avg 3.86
editions: all | this edition
editions: all | this edition
This book is a must for just about everyone. It reads like a novel, but unfortunately its all non- fiction. This book proves that truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.
For anyone who has an interest in protecting your wealth and hard earned money, this is a must reead. I learned how important it is how your personal actions and behaviours can have such a detrimental affect not only to those around you but way beyond those that might seem unafected. The enron scandal was something that e...more
For anyone who has an interest in protecting your wealth and hard earned money, this is a must reead. I learned how important it is how your personal actions and behaviours can have such a detrimental affect not only to those around you but way beyond those that might seem unafected. The enron scandal was something that e...more
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Read in May, 2008
This book takes accounting fraud so complex that Wall Street write large didn't understand it for years and boils it down in a way that is understandable and, more surprisingly, fairly riveting. I am a bit of a junkie for this kind of story (I'd really like to be a prosecutor of white collar crime, I think), but the writers do a pretty incredible job, and given what a major issue Enron has been in our economy, in the law, and in the regulation of corporations, I think this is a worthwhile read ...more
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Read in November, 2006
recommends it for:
people interested in business ethics or think smart people will make the right decisions
Detailed history of Enron from its foundation to collapse, with particular attention paid to the critical characters (Ken Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, Andrew Fastow, etc.) Interesting if you think fall of Enron is an interesting subject (I do, but don't blame you if you don't). My biggest takeaway was the question of whether getting "the smartest guys" all together in a room will lead to good results, since it was clearly such a catastrophe in this case. And, if getting the smartest guys ...more
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Read in March, 2007
Another excellent work that provides insight into how financial incentive regimes (Regulations, Markets, Competitor Behavior)influence the actions of micro-players (CEO's, divisional managers, etc) in the business world.
Enron's collapse is a case study of what can go wrong in an economic system that lacks adequate checks and balances coupled with the increasing disempowerment of other important economic actors (labor unions etc). Unfortunately whatever lessons have been learned from ...more
Enron's collapse is a case study of what can go wrong in an economic system that lacks adequate checks and balances coupled with the increasing disempowerment of other important economic actors (labor unions etc). Unfortunately whatever lessons have been learned from ...more
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Read in December, 2006
If you scratch your head trying figure out all of these acronyms in finance, it's worth going back and reading about some of the boys who took off-balance sheet transactions to a whole new level. So much has been written about the rise and fall of Enron, but this book does it succinctly and at a layman's level. Plus they give you the whole People magazine backstory on these traders, including the names of the strip clubs in Houston the frequented and Ken Lay's difficult childhood.
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Read in March, 2009
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Everyone knows Enron collapsed, everyone knows they were crooks, but the real story is so complicated and almost no one knows the actual details of the fraud. As opposed to Worldcom and Tyco where the frauds were actually relatively simple (capitalizing expenses instead of booking them) Enron was a massive scheme where its hard to say any one person knew just how extensive but very easy to say everyone (and I mean every single employee) knew something was going on. This book breaks it down in ...more
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Read in May, 2008
Wow, there really wasn't anything redeeming about this company at all. I had a newspaper reader's knowledge of the Enron scandal going into this book, and I had always assumed that the company started out with at least some kind of solid foundation, then became corrupted and slowly rotted from within. Instead, it seems to have been speculator capitalism posing as commodities brokerage from the beginning, inflating its profits and stock price and hiding its losses almost all the way along. Th...more
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Read in November, 2007
recommends it for:
Amateur ethicists
This is a copiously researched book that brings some order to the sprawling and complex Enron saga, focusing on the years from Fastow and Skilling's rise in 1997 to Enron's ultimate bankruptcy in 2001. The authors manage to make the events comprehensible despite the many people and entities involved (the "cast of characters" alone goes on for five pages).
Like the events themselves, the book raises more questions than it answers, since the authors maintain firm journalistic...more
Like the events themselves, the book raises more questions than it answers, since the authors maintain firm journalistic...more
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Read in November, 2008
I have always been fascinated with the Enron scandal, especially after focusing on it in some accounting and ethics classes. It's amazing just how unethical this company was, and how many people let them get away with it! So many people could have and should have said something, and even when some did, others just turned a blind eye.
I thought the book was very well written. The authors did a good job at simplifying Enron's complex financing structures, as well as explaining the vario...more
I thought the book was very well written. The authors did a good job at simplifying Enron's complex financing structures, as well as explaining the vario...more
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Bethany McLean started her investigation which ultimately led to the downfall of my first employer after college, Arthur Andersen. I have a special place in my heart for AA since I met most of my closest friends while working there. But while Bethany seemed to find the decisions and actions of the legal, finance and accounting professions incredulous, I was hard pressed to find anyone truly shocked by the actions, only the ultimate outcome. Since I am still part of the corporate world, I can ...more
Read in July, 2008
The story of Enron has a bit of a epic arc: the emergence from nothing, the rise to prominence, the arrogance and hubris, and finally the decline and fall. It is amazing (and will make you take pause) how many awful, unethical things that happened over just a few years down in Houston. That being said, it illustrates the some fundamental problems with the contemporary corporate form: a dispersion of responsbility, ignornance of employees and investors, and bright-line rules that seem almost de...more
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Has a copy to sell/swap
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Read in August, 2007
recommends it for:
People Who Liked "Barbarians at the Gate"
A well researched and engaging look at the Enron debacle, this book should be considered the definitive telling of the Enron story. Bethany McLean does a good job of balancing the technical details of the story with the human elements of the drama. In other words, she does an equally good job explaining what happened as well as why it happened. She also does an exceptional job of explaining the intricate details of the complicated accounting tricks Enron used in a way that is understandable to ...more
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Read in May, 2008
Very well writen study of the rise and fall of Enron. Not only was the book easy and fun to read, but Mclean does a fabulous job of explaining the complicated Enron fraud to a non-finance person like myself. I feel like I understand so much more about recent corporate fraud having read this book.
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Read in June, 2008
A fantastic read. Written by one of the people who broke the story in the first place. Really shows the mentality of the Enron culture and how everyone was encouraged to be as greedy as possible. In my opinion, a must-read by anyone remotely interested in business and/or social ethics.
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Read in March, 2009
Interesting, well-written, and surprisingly readable given the financial detail, this book had me saying, "ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?!?" time after time. It's just un-freaking-believable how convoluted their whole system was, and how people KNEW that something was fishy outside of Enron but were complicit in the deceiving due to large profits. This is a really great read, both for its telling of the Enron fiasco, and for its insight into modern American financial systems.
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Read in June, 2009
Good read not quite as gripping as barbarians at the gate and less character development. Kinda shows how tough it is to build real value and also how if short term profits are high enough, folks don't worry about long term effects as they don't care.
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Read in January, 2006
omg this book kicks... factual, but very powerful. Excellent research and account behind the people and fraud.
EDIT: Jan 2009 I can only hope that books written about the fraud going on these times could only be half as good as this one
EDIT: Jan 2009 I can only hope that books written about the fraud going on these times could only be half as good as this one
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A well-written book. At the time it seemed like an incredible story, although these days as we kiss goodbye to one investment bank after another (Lehman today) it seems a bit passe!
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Read in October, 2007
This took a while to work through because it's impossible to talk about the accouting in a way that isn't a little hard to follow at times. Hard to follow was the whole point of Enron's accounting. But this was fascinating, mind boggling, and infuriating. (The film is also really amazing.) In the end, the authors point out that the corporate culture that allowed this to happen basically "embrace[d] the notion that ethical behavior requires nothing more than avoiding the explicitly illeg...more
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