And thirty years later, if you're going to read only one book on Watergate, that's still the one. An open package of Newport Lights sat in the center console, a bottle of Evian water in the cup holder. When police found his body, there were two guitar picks in his wallet. However, the authors enrich and colour the story by giving in-depth descriptions of the members of Enron management, and by dropping in helpful context from elsewhere in the timeline. Fascinating insight into corporate greed. 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. Perhaps it was because I'd read Kurt Eichenwald's "Conspiracy of Fools" and may have felt that nothing could surpass that. Privately, he would grudgingly acknowledge occasional business mistakes—including one, the failure of Enron’s broadband venture, that cost the company more than $1 billion. So the 100 hand-picked guests who pulled up to the valet-parking station on this Friday afternoon had been summoned by furtive phone calls just two hours earlier. The Texas memorial service took place after Baxter was buried in a private ceremony in his hometown on Long Island. There was an error retrieving your Wish Lists. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is a 2005 Oscar-nominated documentary by Alex Gibney which charts the rise, peak, and fall of the energy corporation Enron; it is based on the 2003 book of the same name by Fortune reporters Bethany MacLean and Peter Elkind.. 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? Its bankruptcy marked not merely the death of a company but the end of an era. I think I will stick to the documentary in future. An excellent tale of … This account of the fall of Enron should be required reading for business students and in ethics courses. Find all the books, read about the author, and more. Read this book using Google Play Books app on your PC, android, iOS devices. Directed by Alex Gibney. The precise location of the service—the ballroom of the St. Regis, the city’s swankiest hotel—remained a secret until noon that day, at the insistence of Carol Baxter. Where had the billions gone? The movie entitled “ENRON: Smartest Guys in The Room is based on a book with the same title written by Bethany Mclean and Peter Elkind. In my business career, I saw many of these behaviours - but on a much smaller, more contained scale. Peter Elkind is an award-winning investigative reporter and the author of The Death Shift. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 7, 2014. What happened to Enron, Skilling insisted, was part of the brutal cycle of business life. Unlike Enron, the Texas-based energy giant that has come... Free shipping over $10. ... After seeing a play about Enron, I wanted to learn more. Then there was the media, pestering him at home a dozen or more times a day: Did he know what had gone wrong? This book is well researched and makes most of the complex deals and accounting policies understandable. Enron was a little before my time, so obviously I had heard of the scandal but didn't really know of any details. “It became a part of your life, just as important as your family. On a cool Texas night in late January, Cliff Baxter slipped out of bed. Adapted from the book of the same name, “Enron” meticulously tracks the rise and fall of Enron boss Kenneth Lay and his second-in-command, Jeffrey Skilling, while also delving into the grotesque activities of their various lieutenants. The tenth-anniversary edition of the definitive account of the Enron scandal, updated with a new chapter The Enron scandal brought down one of the most admired companies of the 1990s. I love the play and film that are based on this book but the actual book itself is not my favourite. In the space of two weeks, I'd only read 150 pages. I found the title of this book to be quite ironic, yet appropriate. Then, dressed in blue jogging slacks, a blue T-shirt, and moccasin slippers, he climbed into his new black Mercedes-Benz S500 and drove out into the night. The public scrutiny Enron triggered exposed more epic business scandals—tales of cooked books and excess at companies like Tyco, WorldCom, and Adelphia. Why This Book Matters: The Smartest Guys in the room outlines the events that lead to the failure of Enron, a once shining example for innovative marketing. This book is generally acknowledged to be the definitive account on Enron and the creative accounting era. Peter Elkind, Bethany McLean. Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. Drawing on a wide range of unique sources, the book follows Enron’s rise from obscurity to the … This energy trading company suddenly collapsed in 2001, leaving pretty much everyone in shock and disbelief. This book examines the history of each side's deadliest prison, how the camps came about, what life was like for the prisoners, and the aftermath. “We were doing something special. getAbstract maintains complete editorial responsibility for all parts of this Abstract. Baxter was convinced they were having him tailed—and rummaging through his family’s trash. He has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Fortune, and Texas Monthly. There was a problem loading your book clubs. Part of it was his audacious refusal, in the face of a dozen separate investigations, to run for cover. He would tear up as he spoke about what building Enron had cost him: he had destroyed his marriage, ignored his kids. 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. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is a 2005 American documentary film based on the best-selling 2003 book of the same name by Fortune reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, a study of one of the largest business scandals in American history. Baxter was a gifted musician. To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number. It convinced me that the story was not about numbers; it was about people. 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. This wasn’t the time for such grim shoptalk; what’s more, their lawyers had pointedly instructed them to avoid such conversations. Something went wrong. I had difficulty motivating myself to want to read this and most of the time I'd read a couple of pages and put it down for another day. Fortune magazine named it “America’s most innovative company” six years running. Addictive, for the compelling unfolding horror, Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 26, 2020. Thankfully, most businesses have more effective constraints in place. The president of the United States called Enron chairman Lay “Kenny Boy.” Enron had transformed the way gas and electricity flowed across the United States. “You’re not going to find one memo where Skilling said, ‘Fuck with the numbers,’ ” he told a friend. There's a problem loading this menu right now. Putatively, it began with good intentions and a believable vision. Just when you think the authors have revealed the most outrageous anecdote or ridiculous scheme or pathological behaviour, they pull yet another out of the seemingly bottomless pit that was Enron. The Smartest Guys in the Room (2003) tells the remarkable tale of energy trader Enron – once a poster child for market innovation on Wall Street – and its dramatic fall from stratospheric heights. edition (November 26, 2013), Reviewed in the United States on October 7, 2018. “I view my life as over,” he said during an extended dark spell. One can only imagine the pains the authors went to to synthesize and rationalize dozens of interviews and thousands of documents spanning over 15 years of one the most opaque and counter-intuitive businesses ever to have existed! An Enron corporate jet—a remaining vestige of the company’s imperial ways—flew Cliff’s family and a few others east for the funeral. This was interesting in concept but so dull to read. 30 Days of Discipline: Practical Habits to Build Discipline and Focus in the Next 3... Cryptocurrency: The Basics of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Blockchain. But Skilling wouldn’t have any of it. Buy a cheap copy of The Smartest Guys in the Room: The... book by Bethany McLean. I loved this book. “It makes me ashamed to be an American.”   Even after the bankruptcy filing, he continued to exult over the innovative ways in which Enron went about its business. A congressional committee had already called; the FBI and SEC would surely be next. The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir. Enron dives from the seventh largest US company to bankruptcy in less than a year in this tale told chronologically. •    In the months after Cliff Baxter’s memorial service, Jeff Skilling could often be found in an otherwise empty hole-in-the-wall Houston bar called Muldoon’s, downing glasses of white wine. Please try again. McLean and Elkind are credited as writers of the film alongside the director, Alex Gibney. Given the passage of time I can't say which is better, but this is an amazing book, possibly made even more amazing by the passage of time itself and the fact that I didn't replace this copy with the 10th anniversary edition. July 5, 2006 • Fortune's Bethany McLean wrote about Enron in the book The Smartest Guys in the Room. However, the authors enrich and colour the story by giving in-depth descriptions of the members of Enron management, and by dropping in helpful context from elsewhere in the timeline. In an industry built on brawn, Enron prided itself on being a company that ran on brains. Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations, Select the department you want to search in. From that point on, Enron's house of cards began to crumble. At 43, John Clifford Baxter, the son of a Long Island policeman, had made it big in Texas. Rarely has there ever been such a chasm between corporate illusion and reality. 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