The Smartest Guys in the Room

I love this book because it provides all the detail a reader interested in the cornucopia of bullshit that was the Enron scandal of the 1990s, desires. 

The book reveals the fates of all the key players in the scandal by delving into their thinking and flawed reasoning.  This comprehensive case study examines the downfall of one of the most revered companies in America. It reveals that while the Enron failure was undoubtedly facilitated by the common corporate vices of greed and moral indifference, its core problem laid in its exceptional proficiency in the very skill that garnered it the… show more.

Because I was a prosecutor on the Enron case, people often ask me what to read about it (or even to explain it to them!). At the time, we used to say that Enron was calculus to every other case’s algebra when it came to corporate financial fraud. Elkind and McLean (McLean had a lot to do with questioning Enron’s narrative before the company’s decline) have done the definitive job of explaining a very hard case in accessible style and detail. The truth is that accounting fraud is a very technical form of corporate fraud, sometimes painfully so. But, as… show more.

We shouldn’t forget about the collapse of Enron, and this is the definitive book on the company, the one that has survived the test of time. All of the living Enron executives who were sentenced to prison are now out, so it’s a good time to take a look at them, not only to realize how gripping their stories still are, but to see how much they parallel some shenanigans in the markets today. Many companies continue to use accounting schemes that are similar to Enron’s, so it’s worth going back inside Enron, even if all you want is a… show more.