Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story

This is one of the best books I have ever "read". It's a great crime novel, unfortunately a true story. The author makes it very easy to understand all of the theft and fraud that took place at Enron. Do not feel daunted by the length of the book. It is a compelling listen.

Eichenwald does a great job of putting the listener right into the picture of what was going on at Enron. You feel as if you were looking over the shoulders of the key players as it was happening.

Again this is one book that the detail is absolutely supreme,Very well reconstructed! Absolutely two thumbs up great work Kurt Eichenwald !!!!!!!!!!

Riveting. The factual details used in the "story" and the way the author built the plot, step by step, made it hard to imagine how this could have happened -- it is no wonder our economy took such a shock from this and the other corporate scandals that took place in that era.

Fascinating! Highly recommended!

This is a review of the factual elements of the building and decline of the now household word:
Enron. Appropriately titled - it's a modern version of the Emporer's New Clothes

The book is very well read, but the author focuses a little too much on pinning the blame solely on Andrew Fastow. It's hard to believe that he fooled everyone. Could have been more balanced by holding the other characters accountable (Skilling, Lay, board members), and should have focused more on Capitol Hill support / involvement in this whole mess. Nevertheless, the book does offer insights into a series of complex actions and transactions that led to the demise of Enron. Jury is still out, though (literally). I gave it only 3 stars as I feel the material only covers 60% of the "real story". Great reader, though.

Then get the audio book Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story by Kurt Eschewal. Listening to this won?t get you a degree, but it will let you know what is going on?and it will keep you awake too.

The writer has done a fantastic job?and I say this as a fellow-writer. It is practically a movie script written as a novel?including settings, actions and expressions for the actors. The narrator should get a medal too.

This could be a TV series?but this won?t happen because it is too embarrassing. It wasn?t just some Enron executives who were fools, it was America itself. The dot-com boom was the biggest foolishness America ever experienced, an experience it may never recover from. It destroyed some of our basic values. It put the system firmly in control.

It?s easy to see what happened from a distance, or at least it seems easy. But when you look at the details, as this book does, you see how many people were involved?some of them striving mightily to keep it from happening; some of them, like Ken Lay, so enraptured with his power he couldn?t see what was going on under this nose; and the white-collar criminals who thought they would get away with it?and almost did. And everything in-between, including accountants who looked the other way, while holding out their hands.

Reality is very complicated, and it is tempting to simplify it into a morality play, and just through the bastards in jail. But if greed and stupidity were crimes, no jails would be big enough. And greed and stupidity are becoming bigger, not smaller?becoming global.