( 22 reviews )
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Posted: Aug 5 2009
I began reading this book with some misgivings because the subject matter isn't exactly tea fare. Having not read anything by Kurt Eichenwald until now, I was thrilled with his writing style. I lived in Dallas during all the hoopla and news of the demise of Enron so I was somewhat familiar with the main characters. Eichenwald does a marvelous job of developing these characters and their personalities with all their pluses and minuses. Unadulterated greed is at the heart of this whole experience and he exposes this at every turn. This is a thick book, but I couldn't put it down except to rest. It read like a mystery novel and I credit Eichenwald with his marvelous ability to keep me engaged, turning those pages for the next unbelievable deal and/or crisis. Everyone is taken in from Washington, D. C. on down the line. Hopefully some lessons were learned by those in power as well as the rest of us.
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Posted: Jul 1 2009
I read The Smartest Guys in the Room and it is factual and goes into detail regarding the transactions and deals that brought Enron down, but this book is much more entertaining in that it is written like a story. I suggest reading The Smartest Guys in the Room 1st and then read this book - it brings the first book to life and then buy or rent the video.
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Posted: Feb 28 2009
This was the first of three books and numerous articles I have read about the Enron catastrophe. This one seems to take great pains to exonerate Ken Lay. Everything is someone else's fault. There is a lot of interesting and factual information here, but most of it seems twisted to protect Ken Lay and lay all the blame on Andy Fastow. While Fastow is certainly a crook, the main problem with Enron was not the end-stage shenanigans, but the way the company was run, the way commissions and bonuses were paid for lousy deals, Enron's system of robbing California and other states of billions of dollars, that really caused the problems. Ken Lay ran Enron the way George Bush ran the US economy, and got similar results. (It didn't help that Lay/Enron was Bush's biggest financial backer since the early 1990's, either.) [...]
