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Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron

The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron

By Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind

Named "one of the ten best business books of 2003" ("BusinessWeek"), this national bestseller is updated with new material on the amazing rise and scandalous fall of Enron. It includes a 16-page photo insert.

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Book Information

Publisher: Portfolio
Publish Date: 11/26/2013
Pages: 480
ISBN-13: 9781591846604
ISBN-10: 1591846609
Language: Eng

What We're Saying

September 29, 2008

Shelf Awareness, a great site that follows the book trade, requested book suggestions that would help explain the current credit crisis. On Friday, they ran the piece under the heading Meltdown Lit: Recommended Books for the Wall Street Debacle. Please go check out the whole piece. READ FULL DESCRIPTION

September 05, 2008

I posted last week on the amazing number of blog posts that have been appearing lately with lists of business books. The latest comes from BusinessJournalism. org, a site that is a part of National Center For Business Journalism at Arizona State University. READ FULL DESCRIPTION

July 18, 2008

Joe Nocera is a columnist for The New York Times who writes about big business, and yesterday my inbox was filled with notes pointing me to his blog. His latest post recommends what he believes are the best business books ever. Here is Nocera's list with his commentary: "Liar's Poker," by Michael Lewis (even though I've since become convinced that the anecdote that gives the book its title never happened). READ FULL DESCRIPTION

October 26, 2009

The Match King: Ivar Kreuger, the Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals by Frank Partnoy, PublicAffairs, 272 Pages, $26. 95, Hardcover, April 2009, ISBN 9781586487430 When reading The Smartest Guys in the Room, the outstanding book by Bethany McLean that looks into the Enron debacle, you will learn about an accounting term called “mark to market. ” Not being an accountant, my simplified understanding of the concept is that when you purchase a product for $100 and you believe you can sell the product for $200 in five years, you put the sale price on your books at the expected selling price instead of the actual purchase price. READ FULL DESCRIPTION

September 30, 2009

Our company founder, Jack Covert, talked with Penguin's The Business Beat about the book The Smartest Guys in the Room by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind. Jack had questioned whether or not to include the book in his 100 Best Business Books of All Time, co-authored with Todd Sattersten. However, after spending more time with the book, he realized how well the book was written, portraying the importance of vision and looking at the big picture. READ FULL DESCRIPTION

February 09, 2009

It being Monday as it is, we're back at inBubbleWrap, giving away another one of The 100 Best Business Books of All Time. This week, we have The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron. As Jack will tell you, it's the best narrative of the Enron saga that exists on bookshelves, and the edition that we're giving away is updated to include the Enron trial and the death of Ken Lay. READ FULL DESCRIPTION

December 10, 2010

All the Devils are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis by Bethany McLean & Joe Nocera, Portfolio, 380 pages, $32. 95, Hardcover, November 2010, ISBN 9781591843634 I know you might be thinking, “Another book on the financial crisis… really? ” But this is the one that many have been waiting for, and after reading it for myself, I can safely say that Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera have delivered the most comprehensive documentation to-date of the many pieces that built the puzzle of our financial system over the decades. READ FULL DESCRIPTION

September 22, 2011

The following post and Q&A was written and submitted by Tom Ehrenfeld. Joe Nocera is one of the best business journalists working today. He combines a deep knowledge of business with a healthy dose of skepticism, not to mention a good journalist’s passion for poking the powerful in the eye when they need it. READ FULL DESCRIPTION

Full Description

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. And thirty years later, if you're going to read only one book on Watergate, that's still the one. 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.

Remarkably, it was just two years ago that Enron was thought to epitomize a great New Economy company, with its skyrocketing profits and share price. But that was before Fortune published an article by McLean that asked a seemingly innocent question: How exactly does Enron make money? From that point on, Enron's house of cards began to crumble. Now, McLean and Elkind have investigated much deeper, to offer the definitive book about the Enron scandal and the fascinating people behind it.

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. 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. Smartest Guys in the Room is a story of greed, arrogance, and deceit--a microcosm of all that is wrong with American business today. Above all, it's a fascinating human drama that will prove to be the authoritative account of the Enron scandal.

About the Authors

Bethany McLean is the co-author of the bestseller The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron with Peter Elkind.

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Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind are Fortune senior writers. McLean, a former investment banking analyst for Goldman Sachs, lives in New York City.

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