Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant
Review: Like many, I followed the Enron disaster as it unfolded with a certain curiosity usually reserved for matters closer to home. Somehow, the more I learned, the more intrigued I became at the sheer magnitude of the arrogance, incompetence and irresponsible management displayed by executives who were surely thought to be 'the smartest guys in the room'. Fearing the media at large was skewing the coverage afforded to Enron on a whole, I looked forward to a book or report that would serve as a definitive look into the entire Enron affair with the type of thoughtful and provocative investigation that "The Smartest Guys In The Room" provides. Having been extremely disappointed with another recently read Enron expose, I could not recommend "The Smartest Guys In The Room" highly enough. Not only do McLean and Elkind do an excellent job in uncovering the facts, they do so in a crisply entertaining and enticing manner that kept me interested and consumed the entire way through. From the opening chapter, the authors flush out the characters, establish the timeline and ultimately piece together an incredibly insightful story of greed, ignorance and outright superciliousness, worthy of anyone's time and attention. "The Smartest Guys In The Room" is an incredible section of work that deserves to be recognized as the truly inspired endeavor that it is.
Rating:
Summary: Best Book Yet on the Rise & Fall of Enron
Review: For someone like me who sits on a corporate board and did business with Enron (and knew some of the Enron executives involved) -- this book confirms what I suspected for years before the fall: Enron was a sleazy, unethical, immoral company run by crooks. This debacle was encouraged and allowed to happen by the outside directors on the Enron Board. Only they could have stopped it. But as the book makes clear, they never asked the most basic questions any director should ask. Sadly, these directors will probably never be held accountable for their malfeasance. If justice prevails, at least Lay, Skilling and Fastow will ultimately do hard time and forfeit their enormous illegal gains. This book should be required reading for every corporate director. One disagreement with the authors; the Enron players were not the smartest. They were simply brazen, arrogant crooks who thought they were the smartest.
Rating: 
Summary: By far the best of the bunch of Enron books
Review: Having worked with and competed against Enron for over a decade, I--and most folks in the business--have known about funny goings on at Enron for quite some time. This book is the only one I have read that really shows that Enron's problems did not originate with Fastow and that it has been very strange place for a long time. I particularly liked that the authors brought out some of the old school Enron characters like Mark and, particularly, John Wing. It is an entertaining book and captures Enron dysfunction very well.
Rating:
Summary: Good Book - not perfect but gets the job done
Review: This "company" was a joke, the people within it were a joke and the culture of this company was a joke.This thing was a total fraud for years. This baby collapsed after about 10 years of total mismanagement. The one guy who didn't seem to have his head crammed totally up his rear was Kinder. When Lay eased him out - that was that. One tip - if you are running a business - pay your people on the basis of implementing a project, not just starting one. The C-Level staff of this company should do hard time for this.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: The authors had a difficult job--to describe one of the most complex financial scandals in history without access to any meaningful inside information or any of the key players. The result is an admirable reporting effort, but unfortunately it does not result in a particularly useful book. This book is boring and not especially informative.
The writing is lifeless and wooden, the explanations dense, and overall it was very difficult to make sense of what went on.
Above all the book just lacks human drama and anything really surprising. There are no really interesting anecdotes in the book, which in general has a kind of "second hand" aroma to it.
I read Power Failure when it first came out, and frankly this book isn't even half as good.
Rating:
Summary: Very Good Account of an Incredibly Complex Story
Review: Over the last two years, I've been looking for a book that explains the Enron saga in terms that I can understand. "The Smartest Guys" comes closest to doing this. It is written in an informal style but not one that "talks down" to the reader. It is not some "insider, tell all" book but one that takes a global perspective. The narrative takes the reader from the boardrooms in Houston to eastern India. This being said, it's not a perfect book. One thing I have to criticize is the lack of any endnotes, footnotes, chapter notes, or bibliography. With a saga as twisted as Enron's, you'd think it would be mandatory. Another flaw is the fact that although the authors did their best, some of the "special purpose entities" and financial escapades of Chief Financial Officer Fastow left me scratching my head in bewilderment. I could see the big picture: corporate debt was being laundered and "magically" transformed into earnings and profits but I felt a bit like I was watching a particularly skilled magician execute his tricks (the hand is quicker than the eye). Nevertheless, I know a lot more about Enron than I did before. I think anyone who wants to know why the company rose to such dizzying heights before crashing should read it. For those who aren't interested in that, here is my quicky explanation. It was a combination of: arrogance - from the leadership to the foot soldiers corruption - personifed by Andrew Fastow but another pervasive problem lack of oversight - by Arthur Andersen and the banks that "enabled" Enron for far too long as well as the government wishful thinking - Enron's belief that it could do anything and the stock analysts who bought that argument That's it in a nutshell. The bottom line is that like most major disasters there is no single cause. It was a systemic failure. Fastow, Lay, and Skilling wouldn't have been able to do the damage that they did without countless "accomplices."
Rating:
Summary: A must for the non-sceptic
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: The house of cards called Enron.
Review: Hats off to the authors for this very authoritative book about Enron. How did a Fortune 500 company implode into bankruptcy. Simple, poor managers did not oversee their direct reports (Lay, Rice, Skilling, and Mark). The company CFO was virtually printing money by moving dogs to special accounting entities (SPEs) and paying his own company to later sell them back to Enron. The top managers did not consentrate on managing, but rather focused on deal making and doing mark to market accounting, which was very unpredictable. Profits were booked, but most were never realized. As time went on, these deals became very unprofitable with the result of the company having to rely on funny money provided by CFO Fastrow.
This is a great book for those who think Wall Street always values a company correctly. The company was perceived as innovative, but in reality the managers just hood winked the average investor in believing their stories. Investor beware. A very worthwhile read.
Rating:
Summary: Very Entertaining!!!
Review: It is amazing how greed, duplicity and ignorance can come together to destroy an organization. By the end of the book you can only hope that they end up like the poor employees that they destroyed.
Rating:
Summary: An incredible story of genius and greed
Review: This book is by far one of the most interesting non-fiction books I have ever read. It certainly trumps all other business related books. It's not just the excellent writing of the authors, but the Enron saga itself that plays out like a movie.
The book starts out with a brief history on each of the major players of Enron: Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, Cliff Baxter, Lou Pai, etc. Each has their own unique story: Jeff Skilling and his brilliant past at Harvard and McKinsey - Lou Pai and his fetish for exotic dancers. But a clear picture emerges how each of them was brilliant in their own way. They each could have done great things, but this motley crew put into motion one of the greatest scandals in American history.
The progression of the company did not always make for good reading. The explanation of Fastow's entities was complicated and mundane. On the other hand, reading about how these characters managed to pull off various stunts can be downright hilarious. For instance: Skilling's hype caused the stock to rise 15 points in one day, Fastow stole from millions from Enron while Skilling unknowingly thought he was doing a good job, Lou Pai inconspicuously cashed out (...) in stock at the peak of Enron, and somehow Ken Lay was completely oblivious to all the above! In the end, each of the executives was being duped or defrauded by one of the other players.
This is a great book that I highly recommend. As a business student, I find this to be a highly analytical, yet entertaining, story of the stock boom - and later bust - of the late 90s of which Enron was a major catalyst.
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