Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron Book

Order Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron Online! Find all bestselling titles and hard to find books, like Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron, shop our online bookstore for Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron and other popular books. We make it easy for you to search for, find and buy Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron and titles by other bestselling authors. Search our book store by Category, Author, ASIN/ISBN, Title or Power Book Searches!

Book By: Bethany McLean, Peter Elkind

See Larger Image

Sales Rank: 750; Release Date: 13 October, 2003; Media: Hardcover

Customer Book Reviews
Average Rating: Rating: - Smartest Book in the Store We've all probably had our fill of the sickening sagas of one corporate scandal after another. But The Smartest Guys in the Room is definitely worth the time. It reads like a thriller. The characters seem like they are out of a novel, and the story, when revealed in its putrid detail, reads like a thriller. This a very accessible read. There are a few tough bits where accounting shenanigans are described, but the authors do a good job of explaining everything. A whole new layer of the scandal is revealed here, one that would only be uncovered by a person reading countless news stories over a two year period. Other than the obvious story line of a multi billion dollar company gone bad, there is an undercurrent here--the amazing tale of how long the Enron lies, half truths, manipulation and subterfuge went undetected by the SEC, the big brokerage houses and the banks. Stories of the banks forking over a billion here, a billion there, brazenly encouraging and enabling Enron to feed the beast of its addiction to accounting tricks, corporate jets and hundreds of millions of stock options drained off by shady executive suite characters. Over and above being a great read, this is will also serve as an introduction to the characters who you will read about who will go to jail over the nest couple of years. News stories won't provide the depth of insight into their actions and character--this book will. Rating: - Human Frailty and Corporate Failure The authors have done a masterful job of describing the critical mass of complicated personalities that contributed to the Enron meltdown. McLean and Elkind are keenly perceptive about human nature at its worst, and paint colorful portraits of the personalities of Enron's top honchos. The behavior of Enron executives jockeying for position at the expense of their corporation is infuriating. Ripping off the investors is bad enough, but some of the executives cannibalized their own company with Wall Street's help. Financial engineering may have assisted these people, but their willingness to do it in the first place is a question of character. McLean and Elkind do a masterful job of implying the contributing elements of lack of character. This is a well written and fascinating book. This is not so much a book about finance as it is a book about human behavior in a social crucible where power and high rewards are at stake. This book will become a classic in business school ethics courses and organizational behavior courses. "Collateralized Debt Obligations and Structured Finance" by Tavakoli will become the textbook of choice for any graduate school developing a course in this subject. It's clever in explaining structured finance including Enron's disguised loans. The author gives reasons why investment banks and sureties who aided Enron had their own failings in how they distributed internal social rewards. It's a structured finance text that warns against and suggests defenses to this kind of behavior and starts out saying that one should expect fraud and be prepared to diffuse it. Rating: - A must for the non-sceptic My blood ran cold reading of how long the officers of this firm managed to pull the wool over the investment community's eyes, aided and abetted by the deleriction of duty of those in whom we trust (and pay hansomely) to guard against such crooks. If there was ever a book to convince investors to do their own homework and to think independently, this is it. A well written and an engaging read. Well worth the money.

Our book store lists Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron and all the bestsellers, top titles and like Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron, online bookstore offering bestsellers from many popular authors.

Power Book Searches: Category, Author, ASBN/ISBN, Title or Power Book Searches!