Conspiracy of Fools

A True Story

By: Kurt Eichenwald

Narrated by: Robertson Dean

Length: 30 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's summary

From an award-winning New York Times reporter comes the full, mind-boggling true story of the lies, crimes, and ineptitude behind the Enron scandal that imperiled a presidency, destroyed a marketplace, and changed Washington and Wall Street forever.

It was the corporate collapse that appeared to come out of nowhere. In late 2001, the Enron Corporation - a darling of the financial world, a company whose executives were friends of presidents and the powerful - imploded virtually overnight, leaving vast wreckage in its wake and sparking a criminal investigation that would last for years.

Kurt Eichenwald transforms the unbelievable story of the Enron scandal into a rip-roaring narrative of epic proportions, taking readers behind every closed door - from the Oval Office to the executive suites, from the highest reaches of the Justice Department to the homes and bedrooms of the top officers. It is a tale of global reach - from Houston to Washington, from Bombay to London, from Munich to Sao Paolo - laying out the unbelievable scenes that twisted together to create this shocking true story.

Eichenwald reveals never-disclosed details of a story that features a cast including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul O’Neill, Harvey Pitt, Colin Powell, Gray Davis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Alan Greenspan, Ken Lay, Andy Fastow, Jeff Skilling, Bill Clinton, Rupert Murdoch and Sumner Redstone. With its you-are-there glimpse into the secretive worlds of corporate power, Conspiracy of Fools is an all-true financial and political thriller of cinematic proportions.

©2005 Kurt Eichenwald (P)2005 Books on Tape

Critic reviews

• 2005 Audie Award Nominee, Nonfiction (Unabridged)

"As an unadorned attempt to get into the heads of some major manipulators, this book can hardly be bettered." (Publishers Weekly)

“The thriller of the year - and it’s all true!” (Dallas Morning News)

“Ranks with A Civil Action as one of the best nonfiction books of the last decade.” (New York Times Book Review)

"Conspiracy of Fools is a splendid achievement. Mr. Eichenwald has an encyclopedic grasp of a watershed business collapse, and has turned it into a gripping read, a true tale for our times." (The New York Times)

Long..but worth it.

If you could sum up Conspiracy of Fools in three words, what would they be?

An excellent summary of the events surrounding Enron's collapse. The level of research is stunning. The reader is good.

SO WELL WRITTEN & RESEARCHED

Kurt eichenwald is my new literary hero. OMGoodness he writes such a detailed and organized story. I never thought a sort of documentary/story would bring me to tears but I got SOOOOO involved with this true cast of characters, I cried at their downfall.

A great "read"

If you could sum up Conspiracy of Fools in three words, what would they be?

At first, I was a bit intimidated by the length (30+ hours), but I couldn't stop listening. I found myself listening to this book every free moment I could. It was very well written, in-depth and obviously well researched.

Sound research + lively writing = terrific tale!

Enron is to corporate corruption and public accounting fraud as Count Dracula is to Halloween and evil itself. Enron is also a timeles legend in the excesses of insufficiently regulated capitalism and insatiable human greed, power and downfall.

Well done

The book is very well written and read .
I would rated as a top ten in my library.
You just want to keep listening and finding out the next step in the story. The author identifies the core problem that Enron and today’s corporations face with culture during his interview at the end. Very well done.

Everything Enron

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I would recommend this to anyone who has an interest in business culture and how Enron literally changed the way business are today.

Which character – as performed by Robertson Dean – was your favorite?

The performer does an excellent job of putting a vocal twist on each character.

great book

Would you listen to Conspiracy of Fools again? Why?

yes

What other book might you compare Conspiracy of Fools to and why?

its in a class all its own

Which character – as performed by Robertson Dean – was your favorite?

all

What’s the most interesting tidbit you’ve picked up from this book?

true scumbags

Any additional comments?

a must read for any investor, my wife is a CFO and actually bought some of the Enron assets when the feds closed them down so knew some of these jerks. It shows how bad it hurts the working class when these things happen

Makes you wonder....

This book was well written even for the layman. It was hard to keep track of the characters and their actions at times, but it moved along and I eventually caught on. I would recommend this book. It has me questioning the integrity of companies that report huge profits. The narrator was awesome. He used voice inflections to distinguish the characters.

Amazing story and clear narrator.

Awesome book. Couldn’t stop listening to it. It has all the ingredients of a page turner.

20 Years Later and Nothing Changed

It was horrifying listening to this, realizing it was over 20 years ago, and that companies these days are even more corrupt than they ever could have been. That said, over the years this book has become something of a guilty pleasure of mine. Long drive to take that I need something to listen to? Perfect book as I can jump anywhere in it and suddenly be in a different time/place.

From a story perspective it absolutely sets the stage (taking time to explain who the main players were, their backgrounds, and even to a certain extent their motivations) before diving into just how the house of cards was built, and leading you to the inevitable conclusion of why what happened happened. The only negative part to me was that there were a lot of... narrative leaps... taken, and the author had a pretty clear idea of who-all was guilty, while skipping over some major characters who shaped the story.

Excellent narration, Robertson Dean never disappoints, and he brought a wide cast to life and honestly made the hours disappear.