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Rating: 
Summary: Some of these folks need to serve jail time
Review: Cruver was an inside witness to the greatest act of economic terrorism ever. Enron had hired nothing but the best and the brightest. They bragged about letting go 15% of the workforce every six months; those who could not measure up to the intense standards of competitiveness set by their colleagues and supervisors. Of course, this pressure has been suggested by some to be one of the root causes for the mendaciousness and rapacity that pervaded the Enron culture.
It also provides another example of the shallowness of image. There was a huge gulf between Enron's stated corporate values and their actions. "Rarely has the difference between sermon and conduct been so dramatic. The contrast between Enron's moral mantra and the behavior of some Enron executives is bone-chilling. Indeed, the Enron saga teaches us the limitations of corporate codes of ethics: how empty and ineffectual they can be. . . . Among Enron's stated core values were respect, integrity, communication and excellence." In reality, the collapse revealed corporate greed and misbehavior at its worst. To make matters worse, accountants whose job it is to provide the certification of rectitude of financial documents provided the tools used by executives to steal. The famous business schools should look long and hard at the methods by which they delivered morally bankrupt MBAs almost totally lacking in any moral fiber.
No one should have been surprised. It all started in the mid-eighties. Several Enron executives played fast and loose with the truth, and the result was an oil trading scandal. Ken Lay kept the executives on his staff. Talk abut a message to the employees. From then on, the only thing that mattered was getting the huge bonuses that depended on meeting certain targets. It didn't matter that the people hired to build the plants were completely inexperienced, or that Enron executives [ticked] off lcitizens and governments where they were building plants. It was all about making a lot of money for themselves.
Ironically, the nickname for the corporation was the "Death Star," and jokes about the "crooked" E symbol were rampant long before the collapse. The company created an arrogant culture that refused to hear any bad news and those who dared to suggest that things were not going well were transferred or removed. One executive had filed papers noting substantial cracks in a pipeline in Panama a year before gas leaks caused an explosion that killed more than thirty people. For his trouble, he was transferred to another project.
Several of the executives went on to other jobs. For example, Tom White, then Vice-Chairman of Enron Energy Services, is now Secretary of the Army under George W. Bush. Scary thought. Enron was consistently ranked as one of the top companies and studied in business schools. What a shame no one was around to remind us the emperor was naked.
Cruver's narrative is clear and suspenseful even though we know the outcome. He takes complicated financial instruments like derivatives and explains them in such a way that even a dumb lay person (pun intended) can understand them.
Rating:
Summary: Hysterial and VERY Informative book
Review: I have read several books on the Enron story, and I have to say, this is one of the best. Cruver's sense of humor is hysterial, and it makes the book fun to read. But, it also provides a lot of insight and a lot of truth behind Enron.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting, but much is public record
Review: I listened to the unabridged version on audio CD. This was really interesting. This is the first-hand account of a lower level professional at Enron who worked there for about 8 months before the bankruptcy and scandal erupted. This was not a real "insider" as far as the people he dealt with and what he did there. It's still interesting as far as learning how the day-to-day worked at Enron for the "normal" employee. You get peeks into the hiring process, training, how quarterly evaluations were handled, basically a bird's eye view of the typical joe at Enron. The rest is his recount of basically what's in public records, appeared in newstories, and a few things about what higher-up revealed to him about Enron. I really knew little about Enron before reading this, so I didn't mind that probably 60-70% of this was recanting media stories. For someone with good knowledge of the key players and issues, this probably will not hold your interest. If you want to know what the average guy at Enron observed and how Enron operated from his view, this is very good and funny.The title is a real misnomer. The author witnessed no greed first-hand at Enron, but pontificates on greed based on the news stories, etc., that any of us could in any event. Coming from someone who while not appearing greedy, but pretty close, selling Enron items on E-Bay that he took with him, he wasn't necessarily the best person to discuss greed. Rationalizing that Enron owed him falls a little short. A good insider's view from the ranks.
Rating:
Summary: More than just an inside perspective
Review: Loved this book - most of all just couldn't put it down. Cruver worked at Enron, so his stories and his experiences are different from any journalist; although Cruver also reports on the story with unexpected humor. The characters are real, and I could not help turning page after page waiting to see what happens to each of them (read the book in two days!) - even though we may THINK we know how the story ends. This was also the first book, and while other reviewers say Cruver borrowed from news stories they forgot to notice that he wrote this book BEFORE those stories came out. Others question the fact that Cruver was forced to disguise names for legal reasons. Nonsense. Every story I've ever read on the subject of Enron has at least one "anonymous source" so Cruver takes you a step further and pushes the envelope on identifiying these not-so-innocent people. This is simply a great book that will be remembered as the Enron book most entertaining, most interesting, and most well-written. I hope he writes more books, and I can't wait to see the movie version of this one (CBS "The Crooked E").
Rating:
Summary: Loved this book! Sure to be a bestseller!
Review: My husband lost his reading glasses, so I read Anatomy of Greed to him...we marveled together at Cruver's ability to remember and then create such vivid pictures of the dad-to-day experiences he and others had of the rise and fall of the Enron empire. We loved Cruver's wonderful sense of humor and can see how this book will be easily adapted into movie form, as you really get to know and care about the characters. We felt we became part of the rank and file as we read each page, and knew what would eventually happen, but kept hoping it wouldn't! We also loved the personal notes Cruver includes throughout - this is a real guy with real dreams that crash and burn all around him - and enjoyed as well his clever use of time frames for each chapter. Along with being so entertaining and easy to understand, it is a wake-up call, and should be mandatory reading, particularly Chapter 11 (!), for all leaders of industry. Mr. Cruver learned a lot from his experience of Enron - you will learn a lot, on many levels, by reading his book.
Rating: 
Summary: Unshed the truth
Review: My viewpoints on this book come from a very different angle then most reviews. I am only in 8th grader and the author of this book is the husband of my cousin. Im probably about 40 pages from the end and am actually enjoying the book. Some things go over my head, but I find it very interesting to see what actually happened. I think it's cool to see what it was like for someone who wasn't involved in all the lying and what it was like to be part of the company. I have learned a lot so far from reading this book and I highly recommend it to everyone else. P.S. If you carefully read the title, it is very clever, get it the Unshredded truth
Rating: 
Summary: A junior look at Enron
Review: Naturally everybody is very curious about what really happened within Enron from an insider point of view. Unfortunately Mr. Cruver position was a junior one, and he didn't stay long enough - just a few months - to become senior. Probably just one or two years would do; he seems to be a smart guy and people at Enron seem to either move fast or get fired. To me it seems the author, after selling some small Enron memorabilia, such as cups etc. - decided to sell his "junior" Enron memories. If some one is looking for a good, non technical book about Enron, I suggest "Pipe Dreams", by Robert Bryce. If someone is really serious about Enron's accounting and financial practices, I suggest Mr. Neal Batson report to the USA Banruptcy Court, Soutrhern District of New York. By the way the second star is given because Mr. Cruver didn't loose his sense of humor despite all his troubles - and included some witty comments along the book. Also his periodic information about Enron's stock price is an interesting idea; one can compare the stock market's reaction to the sequence of Enron events.
Rating:
Summary: well done memoir
Review: Normally I am disappointed by "insider" books, which tend to be poorly written. This one was a pleasant surprise. It described vividly the experience of working at Enron, and the rape of the company, the employees, and the shareholders by top management, as seen from the view of an employee. It is well written, and Cruver manages to convey the essence of the businesses and the misdeeds of personnel without becoming bogged down in fact, law, and accounting rules. This is not a book for the reader intent on following the details of those rules and the precise nature of the corporate misdeeds. It is, however, fast without being dumbed down, and provides a great view of the world of the employees.
Rating:
Summary: Worthwhile
Review: Only published because it was first on the scene; given the author was an apparently unemployed junior credit-derivatives salesman (who had worked at Enron for just a few months before it went bankrutp, and who continued to receive paychecks for not showing up for some time thereafter) at the time, it's not too surprising he had the time to jump right on writing it. Kudos to him for exploiting the opening, but there's not much of value here, and the book is marred by the author's racism and sexism. The made-for-TV movie is actually better than the book, which says it all.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but much is public record
Review: Written very well. Extremely funny and gives you a true insider's look into the infamous Enron. The author has a great sense of humor about life, considering he was on the inside, making great money, and soon found himself jobless in the wake of the scandals. I give him extra credit for landing on his feet by writing this book! He explains some of the extreme cockiness and spend-thrift ways of his coworkers and his mysterious, anonymous mentor.
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