Rating: 
Summary: A great read even if you know nothing about Enron
Review: This book gave me the indepth history and analysis of the Enron mess that I've been waiting for. Even if you know nothing about Enron or high (low?) finance, this book describes the culture, transactions and people in a clear and lucid style. Why can't more writers describe business transactions using straight forward and concise prose without resorting to "of the moment" jargon? Swartz's characterizations of Lay, Skilling, Fastow and Watkins were engrossing and spot on. I felt like I was in the meetings, on the jets and reading their spreadsheets and e-mails. Clearly Swartz did a lot of research to get this type of detailed analysis. I especially like Watkins rise to the moral high ground. I appreciated how hard she worked in this man's world. She could have "got along to go along" like so many of her peers. Instead she called: "bull...!" and tried to save the company when everyone else was too morally bankrupt and greedy to see the disaster ahead. I highly recommend this book to MBA students, book clubs and all readers in general.
Rating: 
Summary: Just an extended magazine article
Review: This book seemed quickly put together to exploit the explosion of interest in the Enron scandal. It's basically an overly long Texas Monthly article combined with the typical "as told to" book, where a writer-stenographer is fed information by the "co-author" subject.
Rating: 
Summary: good
Review: This book was interesting in parts but not really until the last section. There were early sections that could have been explained in a more engaging way so that you didn't have to have a master's in business to figure out what was going on. (I teach English for a living, so I am used to hard books.) I just found myself losing attention---and being annoyed by attempts to paint Sherron Watkins as a great hero. Although it was a library book, at one point I found myself writing., "What hyperbole! A hero? In the year of 9/11?" Lets not overexaggerate this woman's "accomplishments."
After reading the memo, I don't know what the fuss is about. She didn't really do anything once she wrote the memos, as far as I can see, and didn't plan on it. It's only because of Enron's historical fall that she was able to swoop in like Joan of Arc. I also find it ridiculous that in the year of 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan, her contributions were deemed worthy of Time's Person of the Year honor. It was just dumb and obviously book bashing. But back to the book.
This book gave good portraits of Lay, etc., but there was an undercurrent of male-bashing that I found unacceptable. Like women could do so much better---with their (sometimes) cattiness and overemotionalism. Dumb. I think the best indictment of Time's choice is this: I cannot even remember the other two women that shared the cover with Watkins, and in five years I won't know her name, either. Choose a firefighter, a policeman, a token GI, maybe Rumsfeld, or Bush. But a trifecta of women who didn't even do a tenth of what the above list did? No way!
Sorry to be so mean, but this book annoyed me a bit.
Rating:
Summary: Well worth the money!
Review: This books looks at the personalities and people behind the events instead of the business details. The business details are old news and Swartz has done a terrific job of bringing out the human dimension to the company and the people involved.The writing style made me interested in the people and their behavior, not the details of the deals. It forced me to into a little self examination around what I would have done if employed at Enron. And
Rating:
Summary: "Believe it or not" types
Review: This is the story of a company managed by smart, very smart people. There is no guarantee that smart people are honest. The best part of the book is that it comes from someone who was a part of this smart team, not so smart to reach the top, but was smart enough to be at the right places to know the whole story. Sherron Watkins not only knows the story well but also narrates it at the same pace and excitement of a fast track company. Had Enron published this book, it would have made money trading on the manuscript before it had reached the press. It would have booked a few million dollars in profit from sale of future editions using the "mark to market" route. Some smart executive who had thought of this brilliant idea would have walked away with a fat bonus even before the first copy of the book had left the printing press. This was Enron. What started as a successful company that transported gas, ends up trading in everything it can lay its hands on. Its accounting innovations are nothing short of manipulations of elephantine proportions, carried out with blessings of the now defunct audit firm. No one bothered as long as money flowed in, into the right pockets. " You can't fool all the people all the time", but this story ends when almost all the people who invested in Enron end up as fools. This is the story of a company that once boasted of becoming "The World's greatest company". Well, this is not a story.
Rating: 
Summary: Faint praise for a pretty good, fairly well written book
Review: This is the third Enron book I've read and, in my opinion, this one is clearly superior to the books by Bryce and Cruver. Power Failure had things going for it that the other two did not - an insider who had been at Enron for quite a while and who was at least high enough up the ladder to have some contact with a few of the key players and a professional author to do the writing. Also, the insider here is a knowledgeable enough business person to keep this book from making some of the silly points found in the other books. The result is a pretty good book that is fairly well written. Does that sound like faint praise to you? I suppose it should because that's pretty much the way I feel about Power Failure. I didn't find major flaws, but I also didn't find myself savoring the book even though I'm obviously interested in the subject. I can say that I've read other work by Mimi Swartz in Texas Monthly magazine and generally had a similar reaction - she can take a great topic and produce an OK, but not outstanding story. In this book, perhaps I just didn't share her stated great admiration for Ms. Watkins. I think she did something that took courage, but she was always acting in her own best interests (and inside the organization) and does not, in my view, deserve to be grouped with the whistleblowers from the FBI and Worldcom as she has been. I also think Ms. Swartz missed the mark in her description of the Boxer/Skilling exchange in the Senate hearings and its aftermath. I watched those and didn't find Boxer's comments nearly as powerful as Ms. Swartz recounted them (maybe Ms. Swartz likes liberal Democrats, particularly if they're female?) and I thought the comment about Skilling's red or teary eyes could well have been due to the exchange about Baxter's suicide and not about the whupping he took from Watkins and Boxer. Anyway, enough said - if you're interested in the Enron story, this book is worth reading. At the same time, there's still room for a really good book on the subject.
Rating:
Summary: Faint praise for a pretty good, fairly well written book
Review: This is the third Enron book I've read and, in my opinion, this one is clearly superior to the books by Bryce and Cruver. Power Failure had things going for it that the other two did not - an insider who had been at Enron for quite a while and who was at least high enough up the ladder to have some contact with a few of the key players and a professional author to do the writing. Also, the insider here is a knowledgeable enough business person to keep this book from making some of the silly points found in the other books. The result is a pretty good book that is fairly well written. Does that sound like faint praise to you? I suppose it should because that's pretty much the way I feel about Power Failure. I didn't find major flaws, but I also didn't find myself savoring the book even though I'm obviously interested in the subject. I can say that I've read other work by Mimi Swartz in Texas Monthly magazine and generally had a similar reaction - she can take a great topic and produce an OK, but not outstanding story. In this book, perhaps I just didn't share her stated great admiration for Ms. Watkins. I think she did something that took courage, but she was always acting in her own best interests (and inside the organization) and does not, in my view, deserve to be grouped with the whistleblowers from the FBI and Worldcom as she has been. I also think Ms. Swartz missed the mark in her description of the Boxer/Skilling exchange in the Senate hearings and its aftermath. I watched those and didn't find Boxer's comments nearly as powerful as Ms. Swartz recounted them (maybe Ms. Swartz likes liberal Democrats, particularly if they're female?) and I thought the comment about Skilling's red or teary eyes could well have been due to the exchange about Baxter's suicide and not about the whupping he took from Watkins and Boxer. Anyway, enough said - if you're interested in the Enron story, this book is worth reading. At the same time, there's still room for a really good book on the subject.
Rating:
Summary: People Who Do People
Review: Unless you are a corporate bean counter and have a firm foundation of the Enron debacle, I suggest you read Robert Bryce's *Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, and the Death of Enron* before reading "Whistle-blower" Sherron Watkins' story, here with the help of Texas Monthly's Mimi Swartz. *Power Failure* is focused more on Enron's people and personalities than The Big Picture. If you are clueless about "Mark to Market" accounting, return to *Pipe Dreams* and do not collect your now worthless Enron-backed Pension. The photos are more plentiful here and the personalities come alive in their wicked glory. There are no footnotes, and few quote attributions - which can lead to credibility issues. What was her motivation? What did she know and when did she know it? Why wait so late? There is one cool -and it's even attributed- quote, which, unfortunately, Azon's "editors" will not let me quote here in its entirety. It goes something like this: Senator Peter G. Fitzerald to Kenny-Boy (Pres. G.W.'s pet name for him) Lay: You're perhaps the most accomplished confidence man since Charles Ponzi. I'd say you were a carnival barker, but that wouldn't be fair to carnival barkers.
Reviewed by TundraVision
Rating:
Summary: Learned something
Review: What I took away from reading this book is that the accounting practices Enron uesd are normal. In fact Wall Street would be loathe to allow any of these standards changed. Certainly the way in which Fastow specifically applied them was illegal, but the overall lesson I learned is that in all probability this type of thing will happen again (see WCOM, etc.) because the rules will not be changed.
Also interesting is an overall book inference that Ken Lay was somewhat unaware of these practices and was supportive in her bringing this illegal activity to his attention. However Ms. Watkins in her speaking engagements promoting this book relates that the first thing Lay did after she met with him (the first time) was to pick up the phone to HR and see if she could be fired. This was not clearly stated in the book, In all fairness there is a mysterious reference to the outside law firm responding to someone asking whether it would be wise to fire her or not. This is the other message we can take away from this book -- don't believe that the BOD or Chairman are necessary above the corruption seen at lower levels. They are more than likely all in on the scam too.
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