The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Incredible Rise and Infamous Fall of Enron - Paperback

Prameet: Brilliant book, dives into exhaustive detail. Sketches out the characters complexity really well. Worth a read to understand some of the behaviour flaws that ruin a giant corporation.

India on Apr 10, 2023

Christian P.: Book is fascinating, narrator was great - overall a terrific listen

Canada on Mar 07, 2022

James: This outstanding, detailed and methodically researched book gives a blow by blow account of Enron in its glory days and Its eventual downfall. Highly recommend.

Australia on Dec 25, 2021

John A.: First, let me add that I knew about the Enron debacle, and I watched the video. This added to the intensity of the book. This story is really mind numbing! I cringed with every chapter on how in the world they (leadership, executives) could get away with what they did. Bottom line: Greed! From Everyone- Leadership, Executives, Bankers, Lawyers, Accountants... The authors do a great job of outlining all the players (Lay, Skilling, Fastow, Mark, Whalley, Rice, Kopper, and more) with their bios, which helps the reader SEE WHY these individuals took the actions they did. You will learn in detail how the DEBT some $38 billion was hidden from Income Statements. When that chapter rolls around you will learn about the SPE's, JEDI, CaLPERS, LJM, LJM1, LJM2, LJM3, Raptors, and more. I'm not an accountant, so this chapter and how Fastow, Kopper, and Gilsan engineered this was mind numbing! However, after rereading this chapter and other chapter discussions I can parallel what and how when I compare it to the Mortgage Backed Security Meltdown in 2008. Basically, Fastow and his henchman securitized the debt. Meaning they created OFF BALANCE SHEET vehicles that were...

United States on Feb 01, 2020

Jose: Muy interesante libro que refleja la caída de un imperio energético (y financiero) así como el final de una era. Si no fuera porque los protagonistas vulneraron sistemáticamente la ley con muchas de sus decisiones (y su desmedida ambición), casi se podría sentir admiración por ellos. No todo vale en esta vida para ganar y este libro sirve un ejemplo paradigmático.

Spain on Oct 05, 2019

Thurnheer Carol: It is easy to read, even for people with no financial background. I sometimes miss a little more detail about their accounting practices but understand that this might be tough to read for others. All in all, it explains very well what and why things went so terribly wrong with Enron.

Germany on Apr 30, 2019

Clem: I found the title of this book to be quite ironic, yet appropriate. Only ‘smart guys’ could pull off such a scandal such as the Enron fiasco, but you then have to ask yourself “How can SMART guys also be so blindly stupid?” If one were to truly believe CEO Jeff Skilling when he said that he never felt he was doing anything immoral, yet always thought he was acting in the best interests of Enron, how could that same person believe him when he abruptly resigns from the company months before its epic bankruptcy while cashing in $60 million of his stock options?

As authors McLean and Elkind tell us, the simple answer is greed. Even if you don’t believe in God nor the Bible, you have to give the author of the Good Book credit when he tells us that the love of money is the root of all evil.
The ironic thing is that the Enron story is so complex, that even the most prudent financial experts in the industry had a hard time deciphering the deception. Let’s be honest, the average layman gets a bit lost when reading things such as a company’s balance sheet or a 10k report, so when the financial experts kept telling everyone how great Enron was and...

United States on Oct 07, 2018