Fortune magazine named it “America’s most innovative company” six years running. When police found his body, there were two guitar picks in his wallet. getAbstract maintains complete editorial responsibility for all parts of this Abstract. For 90 minutes, those who knew Baxter—family members, fellow “boat people” from his beloved yacht club, and Enron friends—heard warm stories about his gentler side. Only ‘smart guys’ could pull off such a scandal such as the Enron fiasco, but you then have to ask yourself “How can SMART guys also be so blindly stupid?” If one were to truly believe CEO Jeff Skilling when he said that he never felt he was doing anything immoral, yet always thought he was acting in the best interests of Enron, how could that same person believe him when he abruptly resigns from the company months before its epic bankruptcy while cashing in $60 million of his stock options? I found the title of this book to be quite ironic, yet appropriate. The Smartest Guys in the Room (2003) tells the remarkable tale of energy trader Enron – once a poster child for market innovation on Wall Street – and its dramatic fall from stratospheric heights. I had difficulty motivating myself to want to read this and most of the time I'd read a couple of pages and put it down for another day. The precise location of the service—the ballroom of the St. Regis, the city’s swankiest hotel—remained a secret until noon that day, at the insistence of Carol Baxter. Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations, Select the department you want to search in. Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations, Select the department you want to search in. Enron was a little before my time, so obviously I had heard of the scandal but didn't really know of any details. So feared was this company, so powerful were its connections, so much was at stake that there was open speculation Baxter had actually been murdered—the target of a carefully staged hit, aimed at silencing him from spilling Enron’s darkest secrets. She blamed reporters’ intrusions for pushing her husband over the edge. Smartest Guys in the Room is a story of greed, arrogance, and deceit—a microcosm of all that is wrong with American business today. Today, Enron is the biggest business story of our time, and Fortune senior writers Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind are the new Woodward and Bernstein. The rumblings had forced the Sugar Land police department to treat an open-and-shut case—Baxter had even left a suicide note in his wife’s car—like a capital-murder investigation, requiring DNA testing, handwriting experts, ballistics studies, and blood-spatter tests. Baxter parked the car in the middle of the street, with the doors locked, the engine running, and the headlights burning. Yet Skilling remained remarkably unwilling to accept any personal responsibility for the company’s demise. ... After seeing a play about Enron, I wanted to learn more. But as he cruised the empty streets of Sugar Land, Texas, Baxter was drowning in dark thoughts. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is a 2005 American documentary film based on the best-selling 2003 book of the same name by Fortune reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, a study of one of the largest business scandals in American history. If you ever wondered how excessive greed and unethical behavior on this scale could happen without someone opening their mouth, I invite you to read this book to see just how easy it was for those operating in grey areas to manipulate data and facts to reap huge profits while convincing themselves and others that they “technically “ weren’t doing anything wrong. He stuffed pillows under the covers so his sleeping wife wouldn’t notice he was gone. It’s as if “they’re calling us child molesters,” he complained. The movie entitled “ENRON: Smartest Guys in The Room is based on a book with the same title written by Bethany Mclean and Peter Elkind. Please try again. The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron is a book by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, first published in 2003 by Portfolio Trade. When Baxter returned from Florida, his doctor prescribed antidepressants and sleeping pills and told him to see a psychiatrist. The emphasis is on human drama, from suicide to 20,000 people sacked: the personalities of Ken Lay (with Falwellesque rectitude), Jeff Skilling (he of big ideas), Lou Pai (gone with $250 M), and Andy Fastow (the dark prince) dominate. I've had this book on my shelf for about 10 years, but for some reason I'd never gotten around to reading it. Top Contributor: Historical Fiction Books, Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2015. “You’re not going to find one memo where Skilling said, ‘Fuck with the numbers,’ ” he told a friend. Portfolio Trade; Reprint edition (September 28, 2004). In my business career, I saw many of these behaviours - but on a much smaller, more contained scale. These blinks detail a gripping story of financial deceit, while shedding light on the personalities that built Enron’s corporate culture and set it up for disaster. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is a 2005 American documentary film based on the best-selling 2003 book of the same name by Fortune reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, a study of one of the largest business scandals in American history. Where had the billions gone? This energy trading company suddenly collapsed in 2001, leaving pretty much everyone in shock and disbelief. This book examines the history of each side's deadliest prison, how the camps came about, what life was like for the prisoners, and the aftermath. Meticulously researched and character driven, Smartest Guys in the Room takes the reader deep into Enron's past—and behind the closed doors of private meetings. •    In the months after Cliff Baxter’s memorial service, Jeff Skilling could often be found in an otherwise empty hole-in-the-wall Houston bar called Muldoon’s, downing glasses of white wine. The public scrutiny Enron triggered exposed more epic business scandals—tales of cooked books and excess at companies like Tyco, WorldCom, and Adelphia. “That will never wash off.”   Desperate to get away, he’d spent part of the previous week sailing in the Florida Keys. Just when you think the authors have revealed the most outrageous anecdote or ridiculous scheme or pathological behaviour, they pull yet another out of the seemingly bottomless pit that was Enron. It destroyed the nation’s most venerable accounting firm, Arthur Andersen. It tells the story of how Enron rose to become the seventh largest corporation in America with what was essentially a Ponzi scheme, and in its last days looted the retirement funds of its employees to buy a little more time. I found the title of this book to be quite ironic, yet appropriate. A congressional committee had already called; the FBI and SEC would surely be next. Periodically, he’d launch into an extended rant: about the media, about politicians, about the aggressive tactics of government prosecutors (“Welcome to North Korea”). It was cloudy and a bit chilly that evening by Texas standards—about 48 degrees—but the sedan was tuned to an interior temperature of precisely 79. July 5, 2006 • Fortune's Bethany McLean wrote about Enron in the book The Smartest Guys in the Room. A short, fit man of 48 with slicked-back hair and cool blue eyes, Skilling typically appeared in faded jeans, a white T-shirt, and a two-day growth of beard. More important than your family. Its bankruptcy marked not merely the death of a company but the end of an era. “It wasn’t a job—it was a mission,” he liked to say. What happened to Enron, Skilling insisted, was part of the brutal cycle of business life. The Poster Boy: SMALL TOWNS, BIG IDEAS, AND THE REALITY OF BECOMING AN ENTREPRENEUR. And it is a truly overwhelming piece of research. Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Like, some moral values, for a start. Reviewed in the United States on February 7, 2018. After viewing product detail pages, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. Just as he had when Enron was riding high, Skilling labeled ExxonMobil a “dinosaur”—as though it didn’t matter that the oil giant was thriving while Enron was nearly extinct. Yet Skilling continued to plead his case with a compelling arrogance. To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number. Everyone seemed to be after him. After viewing product detail pages, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. In an industry built on brawn, Enron prided itself on being a company that ran on brains. Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World, Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco, Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System--and Themselves, When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management, All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis, Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street, “The best book about the Enron debacle to date.”. There was an error retrieving your Wish Lists. Here we have spelled out, extreme capitalism, in its most self-serving, evil and destructive form. In the space of two weeks, I'd only read 150 pages. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 22, 2019. Given the passage of time I can't say which is better, but this is an amazing book, possibly made even more amazing by the passage of time itself and the fact that I didn't replace this copy with the 10th anniversary edition. “Enron was a great company,” Skilling repeatedly declared. Meticulously researched and character driven, Smartest Guys in the Room takes the reader deep into Enron's past—and behind the closed doors of private meetings. Drawing on a wide range of unique sources, the book follows Enron's rise from obscurity to the top of the business world to its disastrous demise. In the space of two weeks, I'd only read 150 pages. One can only imagine the pains the authors went to to synthesize and rationalize dozens of interviews and thousands of documents spanning over 15 years of one the most opaque and counter-intuitive businesses ever to have existed! Fascinating. Peter Elkind, Bethany McLean. The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron. “It isn’t there.” He was reluctant even to pronounce judgment on Fastow, his handpicked finance chief, who—the U.S. Justice Department alleged—had not just done a lousy job as CFO but stolen millions and collected kickbacks right under Skilling’s nose. Buy a cheap copy of The Smartest Guys in the Room: The... book by Bethany McLean. Perhaps it was because I'd read Kurt Eichenwald's "Conspiracy of Fools" and may have felt that nothing could surpass that. Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind are Fortune senior writers. The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron: Amazon.co.uk: Elkind, Peter, McLean, Bethany: Books Select Your Cookie Preferences We use cookies and similar tools to enhance your shopping experience, to provide our services, understand how customers use our services so we can make improvements, and display ads. But Skilling wouldn’t have any of it. service and publisher of book Abstracts. Everyone left the service with a compact disc of his favorite songs, prepared with the help of J. C. Baxter, Cliff’s 16-year-old son. I think I will stick to the documentary in future. I've had this book on my shelf for about 10 years, but for some reason I'd never gotten around to reading it. The result is readable, understandable and enjoyable. “Depending on how it plays out, it may reach a point where it’s not worth sticking around,” he said. An expert piece of journalism. “We were doing something special. Now, McLean and Elkind have investigated much deeper, to offer the definitive book about the Enron scandal and the fascinating people behind it. A documentary about the Enron corporation, its faulty and corrupt … The result is readable, understandable and enjoyable. The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir. It also analyzes reviews to verify trustworthiness. The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron, Previous page of related Sponsored Products. It also analyzes reviews to verify trustworthiness. To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number. Adapted from the book of the same name, “Enron” meticulously tracks the rise and fall of Enron boss Kenneth Lay and his second-in-command, Jeffrey Skilling, while also delving into the grotesque activities of their various lieutenants. But former chief executive officer Jeffrey Skilling—once touted as a brilliant visionary and the man who shaped Enron in his own image—was very much in evidence. There was a problem loading your book clubs. Perhaps it was because I'd read Kurt Eichenwald's "Conspiracy of Fools" and may have felt that nothing could surpass that. The investigation was “a travesty,” Skilling declared. If you ever wondered how excessive greed and unethical behavior on this scale could happen without someone opening their mouth, I invite you to read this book to see just how easy it was for those operating in grey areas to manipulate data and facts to reap huge profits while convincing themselves and others that they “technically “ weren’t doing anything wrong. “Cliff figured out how it was going to play out.”. Prime members enjoy FREE Delivery and exclusive access to music, movies, TV shows, original audio series, and Kindle books. But also, the most basic elements of good corporate governance. Billion Dollar Hollywood Heist: The A-List Kingpin and the Poker Ring that Brought ... To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. He didn’t hesitate to lecture, even scold, U.S. senators. Meticulously researched and character driven, Smartest Guys in the Room takes the reader deep into Enron’s past—and behind the closed doors of private meetings. Baxter was a gifted musician. Before his funk eased, in the months after Baxter took his own life, Skilling openly mulled over whether his friend had done the right thing. So well written that the complications of it all, seem pretty straightforward and make for a relatively easy read. No one, at this early stage, viewed Baxter as a major player in the company’s crash. The Smartest Guys In the Room is a well-written, well-researched attempt to unravel the financial shenanigans that led to Enron’s bankruptcy. There were dozens of books about Watergate, but only All the President's Men gave readers the full story, with all the drama and nuance and exclusive reporting. However, the authors enrich and colour the story by giving in-depth descriptions of the members of Enron management, and by dropping in helpful context from elsewhere in the timeline. Turns out, Enron wasn't really an energy company. No matter what your politics, "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" will make you mad. Above all, it's a fascinating human drama that will prove to be the authoritative account of the Enron scandal. This book is generally acknowledged to be the definitive account on Enron and the creative accounting era. It is very well written in a clear style which makes it easier to keep all the various plots (and there are many) straight in your head. Peter Elkind is an award-winning investigative reporter and the author of The Death Shift. The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told: A True Tale of Three Gamblers, The Kentucky ... Six Figure Blogging Blueprint: How to Start an Amazingly Profitable Blog in the Nex... SEO - The Sassy Way of Ranking #1 in Google - when you have NO CLUE! I loved this book. Baxter had been his closest confidant at Enron, the nearest thing Skilling, who kept his own counsel, had to a sounding board. Enron was a little before my time, so obviously I had heard of the scandal but didn't really know of any details. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. He was laid to rest in a plot he had secretly purchased there just a few weeks earlier, in the throes of his deepening funk. I think I will stick to the documentary in future. Reviewed in the United States on February 7, 2018. Putatively, it began with good intentions and a believable vision. Enron dives from the seventh largest US company to bankruptcy in less than a year in this tale told chronologically. •    Seven days later, Cliff Baxter’s friends from Enron gathered to mourn. Top subscription boxes – right to your door, © 1996-2020, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. The plaintiffs’ lawyers had named him as a defendant in a huge securities-fraud suit. As Skilling saw it, Enron had fallen victim to a cabal of short sellers and scoop-hungry reporters that triggered a classic run on the bank. Unable to add item to List. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 22, 2019. The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron - Ebook written by Bethany McLean, Peter Elkind. Enron: the smartest guys in the room pinpoints a moment when corporate morality was shredded like so many tonnes of incriminating documents in a big business run by small, small men. And it had bankrolled audacious projects around the globe: state-of-the-art power plants in third world countries, a pipeline slicing through an endangered Brazilian forest, a steel mill on the coast of Thailand. Enron’s failure resonated powerfully because the entire company stood revealed as a sort of wonderland, where little was as it seemed. Discover how to start a wildly profitable blog in the next 60 days - even if you have no experience. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 7, 2016. Countless books and articles were written about it, but only The Smartest Guys in the Room holds up a decade later as the definitive narrative. No magic, it's a science and I'm here to be your unique teacher. And indeed that’s how it seemed almost until the moment it filed the largest bankruptcy claim in U.S. history. This is where he came to brood over what had happened at Enron—often for hours at a time. The Texas memorial service took place after Baxter was buried in a private ceremony in his hometown on Long Island. Read this book using Google Play Books app on your PC, android, iOS devices. Please try your request again later. Part of it was his audacious refusal, in the face of a dozen separate investigations, to run for cover. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. Drawing on a wide range of unique sources, the book follows Enron’s rise from obscurity to the … Fascinating. Baxter’s death had stoked the media bonfire and tossed a fresh element of tragedy into a bubbling stewpot of intrigue. More than anyone else, Skilling had come to personify the Enron scandal. Download for offline reading, highlight, bookmark or take notes while you read The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron. Only ‘smart guys’ could pull off such a scandal such as the Enron fiasco, but you then have to ask yourself “How can SMART guys also be so blindly stupid?” If one were to truly believe CEO Jeff Skilling when he said that he never felt he was doing anything immoral, yet always thought he was acting in the best interests of Enron, how could that same person believe him when he abruptly resigns from the company months before its epic bankruptcy while cashing in $60 million of his stock options? It reveals as never before major characters such as Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, and Andy Fastow, as well as lesser known players like Cliff Baxter and Rebecca Mark. Given the passage of time I can't say which is better, but this is an amazing book, possibly made even more amazing by the passage of time itself and the fact that I didn't replace this copy with the 10th anniversary edition. In phone calls and visits with friends, he railed for hours about the scandal’s taint. Please try again. But can we believe it could never happen again? Fascinating insight into corporate greed. Reviewed in the United States on October 7, 2018. There was an error retrieving your Wish Lists. Learn from a practitioner. This was interesting in concept but so dull to read. The Smartest Guys in the Room chronicles the history of Enron, from beginning to end. Contents. The book is a detailed semi-chronological account of Enron from ‘cradle to grave’. Please try your request again later. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 7, 2014. Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free. Then, dressed in blue jogging slacks, a blue T-shirt, and moccasin slippers, he climbed into his new black Mercedes-Benz S500 and drove out into the night. I love the play and film that are based on this book but the actual book itself is not my favourite. It is very well written in a clear style which makes it easier to keep all the various plots (and there are many) straight in your head. The movie is about a crime story and the bankruptcy of ENRON, one of the most successful and even considered as the 7th largest corporation in America, due to the fraudulent acts by the top management. The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron. But at least I knew we had this company.”   Skilling was seeing a psychiatrist and taking antidepressants. About numbers ; it was adapted into a bubbling stewpot of intrigue many ways, smart! Generous helping of stock options, a millionaire many times over and Peter Elkind are credited writers. Beard, Tim Belden, Barbara Boxer, George W. Bush recent a review is if! This book is a detailed semi-chronological account of the worst excesses of both people and the headlights burning was! Ever existed in America Baxter hung up—he wasn ’ t going to read Amazon.com, Inc. its... 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