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)

Exposes a lot.

It was interesting to read the details of this conspiracy of fools. I would have liked it better, because of all the names, if I could’ve had the list of individuals UP FRONT that was given at the end. In a written book, that would be obvious. Here, maybe you could suggest that it is available if someone wants to print it out or hear it? Only other suggestion I have is that the narrator could try to imitate better the voice of some of the famous people. The narration was convincing most of the time, but hard to believe when listening to statements from George W. Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and others with accents that we know are so different. Thanks.

Essential Reading on a Defining Financial Fraud

Well reported and well written narrative about the decline of Enron. This is the first Eichenwald book I've read and I'm excited to read The Informant next which I heard is even better!

Much Better Than The Other Books on Enron

This was amazing. One of the best books I've heard on Audible. The narration was great too.

Highly recommended

I was hestitant about downloading this book at first, my only real knowledge of the Enron story was from the DVD, "Enron - The Smartest Guys in the Room." To be honest, I found the DVD lacking in the detail I needed to understand what happened; I was bored quickly.

This account delivers! Another reviewer stated that all of the blame was placed on Fastow, I have to disagree. Fastow took advantage of an environment that allowed his actions to go unchecked and capitalized on that advantage. We've all worked for people like that (although not to this extreme, I would hope.)

The account is even-handed; there is plenty of blame to go around and the telling of the story is completely engrossing.

Fascinating doings at Enron

Although I followed the debacle at Enron as it was unfolding in the press, I was astounded by the scope of the scandal as detailed in Conspiracy. The narration is crisp, the story troubling and nearly disorienting and the detail fascinating. Most disturbing of all was the palpable absence of integrity at the highest levels of corporate enterprise and those institutions the public relied upon to check greed and mismanagement. This was a great tale, well presented and highly informative. The recently reported jury verdict convicting Lay and Skilling is the icing on the cake.

Fantastic

This is the best book I have ever read! I want more!!!

Best Enron related book I have come across.

Any additional comments?

I am not even waiting until I finish this book to write this review. We already know how the story ended!

This book, in my estimation, is a spellbinding unwrapping of all the events, large and small, that meshed to create the disaster that was Enron.Having worked for a major global corporation for 25 years myself during the same time period that Enron's business environment was evolving, what with the lack of central controls and the general confusion that prevailed, along with, I might add, the free reign that some new hires who were seen as "young geniuses" were given, I identified strongly with this book's description of the events that culminated in total collapse of not just the business, but countless lives and fortunes that were destroyed as a result. Many of us at my company were experiencing the same fright and uncertainty that plagued many of Enron's and other corporations' employees during that intense period, when the structures we had helped to build were blasted away with seemingly not a thought given to the consequences. I worked in accounting, so it all comes across as very real to me.

While this book does mainly break down the more complicated aspects of the financial constructs coming to life within Enron at the time, I will admit that a certain minor percentage of these are still not clear to me. (And never were to Enron, I believe.) But mainly, the book does make clear most of the events and their settings that caused the ruination of Enron. And to no one's surprise, I imagine, your basic unbridled greed was underlying the entire course of events.

The narration of this book is excellent. I have not encountered any irritations with it. The way it is read allows the listener to not even pay attention to the narration, but just to actually be a part of the action. This is as it should be.

There have been many books on this same topic; I have read some of them and did not even finish a couple, due to the way the material was treated. Because general corporate accounting is a foreign language to an average person on the street, the subject has to be made both understandable and most importantly, interesting, objectives hard to attain. This book definitely meets that challenge.

It also provides a realistic acquaintance for the listener with the characters involved, on a personal basis. This is important in understanding the motivations of characters who veered so far off course.

To my taste, this book accomplishes both of the above objectives better than any other I have read on this topic. It is a very long listen, 20-some hours. But that only serves to extend the pleasure of listening.

I believe very few listeners would be disappointed in this excellent book.

WOW!Everything you ever wanted to know about Enron

I was in college and majoring in college when Enron collapsed and absolutely everything about Enron since then has always intrigued me. I never dove this deep into the scandal, but wow, this book covers everything you ever wanted to know about Enron. I love how it starts from the beginning so that you can see exactly how everything goes from a good, honest pipeline business to what it ultimately became. 30 hours of audio seems like a lot, but I could listen to another 30 hours on this subject! Great story, well written, and the performance for the audiobook was spot on. Loved it!

The best title about the Enron collapse

Extremely engaging, very human and very considered. Unlike "Smartest Guys in the Room" and "Power Failure" does not try to point fingers but lets the reader draw own conclusion(s). Also tells the story of the involved to the end (and beyond), which the other two titles lacked.

Really loved it, to the point I would listen to the title beyong my normal window of opportunity. very well performed and ... Just fantastic.

Couldn't put it down...

Would you consider the audio edition of Conspiracy of Fools to be better than the print version?

Incredibly researched and written account of Enron. I would venture to say this is the best non-fiction book I've ever listened to. It is written more like a novel and is very easy to listen to and follow. If you like a good scandal, you'll love this book!