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Power Failure
- The Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron
- Narrated by: Henry Leyva
- Length: 6 hrs and 2 mins
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Publisher's Summary
Critic Reviews
"Swartz paints the most detailed portrait yet of the company's ambitious executives and toxic culture." (Business Week)
"The book offers particularly strong perspective on some of Enron's wilder escapades... It does a stunning job of chronicling the power games within Enron." (Publishers Weekly)
"Riveting to the reader who knows that Enron ended in bankruptcy but has no knowledge of what life was like inside the organization." (New York Times Book Review)
More from the same
What listeners say about Power Failure
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Karen
- 05-13-03
ENRON (Light)
A light read that broadly covers the rise and fall of ENRON. If you are looking for juicy gossip you won't find a lot of it in here...nor will you find much in detail...nor will you find much outside of the author's knowledge. All-in-all a moderate recommendation but I would suggest that there are better recountings elsewhere. Rate this one about a 3 - recommended with reservations. A good "beach" listen.
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- B. W. Larsen
- 05-25-03
A very readable story on a complex subject
I really did not believe that it could be possible to tell the Enron story without requiring the reader to take the cpa exam first - not to mention that it would be possible to LISTEN to the story and gain some insight!
Mostly, the impossible task has been accomplished. The story on greed and criminal conduct is compelling, but what impresses me is that after listening to Power Failure, my own reading of Enron indictments in the business press have been enhanced. To follow the book, there is no need to understand the dirty details of SPEs and accounting entries to understand the reprehensible nature of Enron's officials and the behavior of the public accountants, lawyers, and investment bankers that condoned and promoted the fraud. The book is more setting the scene for judgment of a general corporate behavior rather than revealing and arguing specific transgressions against reigning law.
Power Failure is surprisingly easy listen - you do not find yourself wishing for a paper book where you can re-read a passage to pick up on a fine line violated by the principals - the book spells out Enron's actions in broad strokes that can be understood by most everyone.
The vantage point of the authors do make you wish for more, though. It's not that there is a lack of a smoking gun - Enron was a gun range (to torture the analogy). I suppose what I wish for most, would be a "where are they now" - what happened (or, is happening) to the many people feeding off the trough of Enron... And after listening to this book, I tend to believe that there are a large number of people of bad character untouched by the SEC's "dragnet".
3 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Don_6000
- 04-25-03
A good version
A very good inside version. Very readable. Gets over the atomosphere and culture inside Enron aswell as the the accounting.
2 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Acklin
- 06-26-03
Complex . . . but good.
This is a complex tale that doesn't stop to educate the listener on business and investment terms. The minutia of the business transactions may frustrate some listeners, however the big picture should be easily understood by most all. It is a shocking realization of how corporations can manipulate their earnings to meet earnings projections and satisfy stockholders.
1 person found this helpful
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- FoCoBuzz
- 10-13-22
A fairly surface review of the Enron scandal
Generally, this book is a fairly high-level review of the Enron saga and feels a little surface and lacking depth compared to a book like The Smartest Guys in the Room. The one area that it excels, likely due to the area of expertise of Sherron Watkins, is digging into the details of the off-balance vehicles at the heart of the Enron scandal. While those vehicles were extremely complex and still hard to understand after listening to this book, I came away with a better understanding of their structure than I did from reading Smartest Guys.
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Overall
- Gerardo
- 02-07-04
Power Failure
Poorly edited!
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Story
Before Bill Gross was known among investors as the Bond King, he was a gambler. In 1966, a fresh college grad, he went to Vegas armed with his net worth ($200) and a knack for counting cards. Ten thousand dollars and countless casino bans later, he was hooked, so he enrolled in business school. The Bond King is the story of how that whiz kid made American finance his casino.
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Being a good writer does not make you a good narrator
- By John Mallory on 05-14-22
By: Mary Childs
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Money and Power
- How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World
- By: William D. Cohan
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 30 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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From the best-selling, prize-winning author of The Last Tycoons and House of Cards, a revelatory history of Goldman Sachs, the most dominant, feared, and controversial investment bank in the world. William D. Cohan has constructed a vivid narrative that looks behind the veil of secrecy to reveal how Goldman has become so profitable - and so powerful.
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Much better than expected
- By Mark on 06-15-11
By: William D. Cohan
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The Last Tycoons
- The Secret History of Lazard Freres & Co.
- By: William D. Cohan
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 32 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Discretion, secrecy, and subtle strategy were the weapons of choice at Wall Street investment bank Lazard Frères & Co. For more than a century, the mystique and reputation of the "Great Men" who worked there allowed the firm to garner unimaginable profits, social cachet, and outsized influence in the halls of power. But in the mid-1980s, their titanic egos started getting in the way, and the Great Men of Lazard jeopardized all they had built.
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Good stuff
- By Mr. M Metwally on 09-07-07
By: William D. Cohan
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The Bank That Lived a Little
- Barclays in the Age of the Very Free Market
- By: Philip Augar
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 15 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Based on unparalleled access to those involved, and told with compelling pace and drama, The Bank That Lived a Little is the story of one of the most familiar names on the British high street since Big Bang in 1986. Philip Augar describes in detail three decades of boardroom intrigue driven by ruthless ambition, grandiose dreams and a desire for wealth. It is a tale of a struggle for long-term supremacy between rival strategies and their adherents.
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Global superstar bankers under light-touch gov
- By Philo on 12-21-18
By: Philip Augar
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House of Cards
- A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street
- By: William Cohan
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 25 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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In March 2008, Bear Stearns, a swashbuckling 84-year-old financial institution, was forced to sell itself to JPMorgan Chase for an outrageously low price in a deal brokered by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who was desperately trying to prevent the impending catastrophic market crash. But mere months before, an industry-wide boom had "the Bear" clocking a record high stock price. How did a giant investment bank with $18 billion in cash on hand disappear in a mere 10 days?
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Riveting "Read" About Credit Crisis
- By Thomas on 04-25-09
By: William Cohan
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Buffett
- The Making of an American Capitalist
- By: Roger Lowenstein
- Narrated by: Graham Winton
- Length: 18 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Starting from scratch, simply by picking stocks and companies for investment, Warren Buffett amassed one of the epochal fortunes of the twentieth century - an astounding net worth of $10 billion and counting. His awesome investment record has made him a cult figure popularly known for his seeming contradictions: a billionaire who has a modest lifestyle, a phenomenally successful investor who eschews the revolving-door trading of modern Wall Street, a brilliant dealmaker who cultivates a homespun aura.
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Life changer
- By Steven on 03-28-15
By: Roger Lowenstein
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American Icon
- Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company
- By: Bryce G. Hoffman
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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At the end of 2008, Ford Motor Company was just months away from running out of cash. With the auto industry careening toward ruin, Congress offered all three Detroit automakers a bailout. General Motors and Chrysler grabbed the taxpayer lifeline, but Ford decided to save itself. Under the leadership of charismatic CEO Alan Mulally, Ford had already put together a bold plan to unify its divided global operations, transform its lackluster product lineup, and overcome a dysfunctional culture of infighting, backstabbing, and excuses.
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The best business book I ever read
- By Michael on 10-07-12
By: Bryce G. Hoffman
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The Snowball
- Warren Buffett and the Business of Life
- By: Alice Schroeder
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 36 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Here is THE book recounting the life and times of one of the most respected men in the world, Warren Buffett. The legendary Omaha investor has never written a memoir, but now he has allowed one writer, Alice Schroeder, unprecedented access to explore directly with him and with those closest to him his work, opinions, struggles, triumphs, follies, and wisdom. The result is the personally revealing and complete biography of the man known everywhere as "The Oracle of Omaha."
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2,220 well-invested minutes!
- By BogKid on 01-07-09
By: Alice Schroeder
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Overhaul
- An Insider's Account of the Obama Administration's Emergency Rescue of the Auto Industry
- By: Steven Rattner
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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This first real look inside Team Obama mixes political warfare and big-business shakeups in equal proportions, and comes from a uniquely informed source. Steve Rattner is not just the man brought in by the president to save the auto industry, he is a former New York Times financial reporter who also earned a place among the top tier of Wall Street's most informed investment bankers and corporate experts.
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Overhaul - A Memoir
- By Roy on 12-05-10
By: Steven Rattner
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The Money Culture
- By: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Alexander Cendese
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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The 1980s was the most outrageous and turbulent era in the financial market since the crash of ’29, not only on Wall Street but around the world. Michael Lewis, as a trainee at Salomon Brothers in New York and as an investment banker and later financial journalist, was uniquely positioned to chronicle the ambition and folly that fueled the decade. In these trenchant, often hilarious true tales we meet the colorful movers and shakers who commanded the headlines and rewrote the rules.
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Not the normal great Michael Lewis
- By Me on 05-12-12
By: Michael Lewis
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Tap Dancing to Work
- Warren Buffett on Practically Everything, 1966–2012: A Fortune Magazine Book
- By: Carol J. Loomis
- Narrated by: Susan Boyce, Barry Press
- Length: 17 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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When Carol Loomis first mentioned a little-known Omaha hedge-fund manager in a 1966 Fortune article, she didn’t dream that Warren Buffett would one day be considered the world’s greatest investor - nor that she and Buffett would become close personal friends. Now Loomis has collected and updated the best Buffett articles Fortune published between 1966 and 2012, including thirteen cover stories and a dozen pieces authored by Buffett himself. Loomis has provided commentary about each major article that supplies context and her own informed point of view.
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A collection of finance articles - not a biography
- By Gerardo A Dada on 08-23-13
By: Carol J. Loomis
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eBoys
- The First Inside Account of Venture Capitalists at Work
- By: Randall E. Stross
- Narrated by: Eric Conger
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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The first inside account of life within a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, eBoys is the fascinating true story of the six tall men who backed eBay, Webvan, and other billion-dollar start-ups that are transforming the Internet and setting a new pace for the economy - an audible.com audio exclusive!
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Entertaining but misinformed
- By Sean on 12-01-03