Rating: 
Summary: One of the best on Enron
Review: I have read about four of the books on Enron. This is one of the best ones. It starts to by telling the history of Houston, and as a former Houstonian I found it interesting. After that it tells the story in laymen terms that are very easy to understand. It is amazing to read exactly what went on.I believe that this is a must read for anyone who wants to know who all of the players are.
Rating: 
Summary: Brazos49 is Right
Review: Just finished reading this and was disappointed to the point of deciding to write a non-positive review. I expected to see piles of glowing reviews and be that lone dissenter, but I was pleased to see Brazos49's review. He is right on the money - and even in tune with some sideline players, whereas I echo his statements from the position of a total outsider. Yes, it was a quick light read - fun at times - but there was no meat, no real explanation, clearly no understanding of finance and real business by the author. His explanation of the Enron collapse was like a news report that says that the cause of the accident was because the car went off the road. No kidding. The few financial numbers he included weren't well referenced in the text, nor did they really support his sensationalist statements. Bottom line: it's easy to take pot shots from the rim of the canyon, and while clearly excesses occurred and the targets of these shots deserve no defense, there are few black and whites in this world. Bryce's portrayal of ALL Enron actions as evil comes across as naive and petty; there is no real balance or intelligent analysis here, just mudslinging. Look elsewhere for an account of the Enron debacle.
Rating: 
Summary: Ozymandias redux
Review: Meet Ken Lay, Chairman of Enron, who saw fit to send a corporate jet to retrieve his daughter from the south of France after she tired of partying with The Beautiful People. The cost to Enron? About $125,000. Here's Andrew Fastow, CFO and temper-tantrum-throwing bully, who created numerous sham corporations that turned him into a multimillionaire and helped to send the company spiraling into bankruptcy. Introducing Jeff Skilling, CEO, whose accounting legerdemain--learned at Harvard Business School-- bilked Enron shareholders out of millions.
These and many other corporate criminals are among the cast of characters in this fascinating book describing the rise and fall of Enron-- once upon a time the darling of Wall Street and now a company synonymous with corporate greed.
Robert Bryce does a very good job in explaining how a group of arrogant, greedy, crooked MBA types managed to ruin Enron and wipe out the 401k plans of many employees of the company--meanwhile filling their own pockets so they could buy multimillion dollar homes in the swankiest neighborhood of Houston. We learn of politicians, including President George W. Bush, who help to create policies favorable to Enron in exchange for campaign contribution dollars. And all this is explained in a readable style that translates the minutia of accounting practices into language easily understood by the layman.
Pipe Dreams, however, is not without its flaws. I counted numerous typographical errors in the book, perhaps because the publisher wanted it out before our ever-shortening attention spans wandered. And in the book's epilogue, Bryce refers extensively to a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece suggesting corporate reforms instead of drawing his own conclusions about the Enron debacle.
Still, if sordid tales of corporate malfeasance are your cup of tea, this is the book for you.
Rating:
Summary: Fair, but could have been much better
Review: Mr. Bryce provides a fast reading narrative of the Enron debacle. For the uninitiated, the book would probably prove interesting. For others that followed the affair in the financial press, the book just rehashes much of what is already well documented. Mr. Bryce did research well the company's origins. However, his understanding of finance is limited, and his editing needs improvement -- e.g., former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt's name is misspelled throughout the book. There are other inconsistencies, and Mr. Bryce seems to jump to conclusions, implying in one passage that Ken Lay tried to bribe Alan Greenspan into a bail out of the Company. The Epilogue is totally unnecessary as Mr. Bryce lacks the requisite expertise to proffer remedies for the entire financial services industry. At times, Mr. Bryce seemed to be making an attempt at a "Liar's Poker"-type account (a far superior book, by the way). When he uses words such as "babe-a-licious" in his text, however, I found his effort to be pedestrian.
Rating:
Summary: Uber-Execucrats Get Stomped
Review: Out of many books available on the Enron travesty, this one probably offers the most bang for the buck with its fast-moving and incredibly informative structure. Bryce has sufficient skills as an investigative journalist and provides a healthy mix of history, finance, and politics, allowing the general reader to understand what happened with that ridiculous corporate house of cards at Enron. Bryce's main theory is that the company was done in by a lack of hard cash, as just about all of its revenues were long-term contractual deals in which cash would actually come in slowly and periodically, although the "revenues" could be claimed immediately through preposterous over-use of "mark-to-market" accounting. Meanwhile, greedy executives who set up such deals were paid millions in hard cash bonuses immediately, long before a single cent of actual cash was made for the company. This in turn led to preposterous deal-making shenanigans that were little more than schemes to cook the books and claim profits, such as a bizarre web of tax havens and false subsidiaries set up by the crookedest executive of all, Andy Fastow. Bryce's cash-centric theories on the Enron downfall are open to scrutiny by financial experts, and could possibly be shot down, but that doesn't affect the quality of the book's condemnation of the Enron executives and the suffering they caused for employees and investors. Bryce has a wonderfully biting and sarcastic writing style that leads to some unexpected chuckles, with quips like "there's no sex in laying pipe," "Texas-sized sphincter," and my personal favorite "uber-execucrat" (referring in particular to Enron's purchased statesman Henry Kissinger). Bryce should probably take some heat for his treatment of the women in Enron's upper ranks who may have gotten to the top by less-than-wholesome means, especially Rebecca Mark, who nevertheless blew away a few billion dollars. Bryce is generally harsh in his portrayals of all the guilty executives - from the unscrupulous Fastow and the self-worshipping Jeff Skilling to the utterly incompetent Ken Lay. But these greedy plutocrats, who pocketed tens of millions for their personal fortunes while ruining the lives of thousands of employees and sticking investors with billions in losses, deserve harsh treatment. That's just the beginning of the punishment they deserve. (...)
Rating:
Summary: Enron Fast, Not-So-Cheap, and Out of Control
Review: Outstanding. Does a great job laying out the personalities at the top, which is essential for an understanding of how it is that this particular company got so out of control. Good corporate governance requires an internal system that as able to control strong personalities for the benefit of the shareholders, and this book explains how Enron is such a great object lesson in failure.
Rating: 
Summary: Not the best Enron book
Review: Penn Square was peanuts. Robert Bryce's witty racountement of the rise and fall of Enron reminds this reader of Mark Singer's equally entertaining tale of the itty-bitty shopping center bank in Oklahoma City that went bust and took the Western Oklahoma Oil Boom with it. Bryce's book, with introduction by Molly Ivins, is as eminently readable and well organized as Enron was not. It starts and ends with sympathetic folk - those drug down in the Enron muck. Along the way, the reader meets the Politicos, the Pie (or is that Energy?) In The Sky Wheeler-Dealer Traders, "the Divine Miss Mark," Fast Andy Fastow, Snakey Skilling, and Kenny-Boy (President G.W.'s endearing nickname for his Buddy) Lay. Fans (if any) of Senator Phil and wife Wendy Gramm will not be amused by this foray through the Swamp that was Enron. This is an essential Enron primer, complete with footnotes, Index, and explanations of "Mark to Market" accounting that even us "Liberal Arts" majors can understand. I urge you to BUY this book. Borrowing the library's copy is not recommended, as one should not write the outraged tirades that this book is sure to produce in the margins of Other People's Books.
Rating:
Summary: The Inside Story from the First Whistleblower
Review: Sherron Watkins was Enron's vice president of corporate development. She was 42 years old and had worked for a decade at Enron. She was high up enough, or grumpy enough, to send the head guy at Enron a letter. It was a pull-no-punches, put-it-on-record letter telling him for seven pages that his company was more or less a fraud. She kept on working for Enron through a congressional investigation, covered in front pages across the country. In the news media, it was "Enron whistle-blower" Sherron Watkins". Unfortunately, concerns like hers seem to have been old news in corner offices at Enron. And at other companies. And she may well have written it purely to cover herself. To protect that resume when the inevitable happened. The "CYA" letter is as old as business itself. But she got a reaction. She made sure she got a reaction. She did start the dominoes falling in the Enron scandal. This is the true inside story. If you go through this you will have remarkable insights into the personalities and misdeeds of the people who are now indicted, on trial, or convicted. As the news reports come out, having read this you will have a better picture of what really went on.
Rating:
Summary: The Tail Isn't Far Behind
Review: The author explains that fish rot at the head but the tail isn't far behind. Every journalistic treatment of Enron makes the same mistake. They excoriate higher ups but rank and file workers get a free pass.
If my employer flew first class, subsisted on Steak and Lobster, and allowed employees to acquire stock options worth a million dollars I would be suspicious. Public school teachers, police officers, and nurses don't get a million dollar retirement.
My dad was a Vice President for Medical Affairs. He had three deans and twenty department heads under him but his compensation package would make some mid-level Enron people cringe.
I would also wonder if my employer paid an employee's way through Harvard Business School especially if that employee already had a graduate degree behind her.
The most obvious indictment against Enron's rank and file is that they let the company's third world transactions go unnoticed. You cant get Johnny Walker out of a cactus and you cant rob out the world's poorest countries and still sleep at night.
Rating:
Summary: Getting the Wrongs Right
Review: The great challenge of journalism is to take important information and make it interesting enough for people to read. Unfortunately, daily reporting rarely has the time or resources to write the kinds of stories that might have impact. And there are two few reporters who have the skills to make us interested, much less motivate us to push for change.
Fortunately, Robert Bryce as a full complement of abilities and he has deployed them skillfully in his book, "Pipe Dreams." Bryce has done what neither daily journalism nor the government has been able to accomplish: tell the true story of what went wrong at Enron. And he does it brilliantly.
Bryce drew upon 200 interviews to get the story of mighty Enron's collapse. Everyone who reads the papers or watches the network news knows that there are many things wrong with business and politics. "Pipe Dreams" will be your first chance to learn exactly how corrupted our economy and our democracy have become. Getting the big picture and getting it right is accomplishment enough. But Bryce has given the story a narrative engine that makes it move like a novel. He'll get criticized for being gossipy and breezy in some of his writing. But take out the anecdotes about the people who wrecked Enron and you would have another academic deconstruct of a business that failed. And the story of Enron is so much more that that.
Bryce gets the reader from the beginning when he takes you to an overcrowded job fair with a long time Enron employee. She can't find work. But the people who ruined her company and cost her a job, Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, Andrew Fastow, Rebecca Mark, are all living the lives of multi-millionaires after selling their stock before the collapse. Greed and ambition have long been popular sins in oil town Houston, but Enron execs gave them new dimensions. Self-indulgence also became their favorite past time.
...Bryce has grabbed it all, spread it out on the table for us all to see and shake our heads at. Read it. Get your friends to read it. And then get mad. And do something about it.
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