Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story

Kurt Eichenwald

Rating: 4.0/5 Stars
Rank: 43

This enormous, intimate blow-by-blow of Enron's implosion gets as close to what actually happened, in terms of people making (bad) decisions in real time, as anyone who wasn't there with a concealed video-phone possibly could.

Having combed endless documents and interviewed countless principals and peripherals, Eichenwald (The Informant) presents short declarative sentences (and lots of sentence fragments) that may have run through the heads of men like top executives Skilling, Lay and Fastow as they managed to cook a very large set of books, as well as men like Stuart Zisman, a lawyer in the firm's wholesale division who wrote an early memo titled "Overall Book Manipulation" that stated "the majority of investments being introduced to Raptor are bad ones." Eichenwald's bald depictions ("Skilling sank deeper into depression"; "It couldn't be true, [Anderson partner Tom] Bauer thought") make for real tension.

Collegial meetings at the White House with Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and others; charged conference calls with skeptical investors; endless buy-ins, buyouts and acronyms—all are presented in a rat-a-tat style thick with corporate anxiety, keeping pages turning even as the details themselves are numbing. (Luckily, Eichenwald includes a "Cast of Characters" and "List of Deals" so that readers can remind themselves of past carnage.) As an unadorned attempt to get into the heads of some major manipulators, this book can hardly be bettered. (On sale Mar. 8)
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About the Author

has written for the New York Times for more than seventeen years. A two-time winner of the George Polk Award for excellence in journalism and a finalist for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize, he has been selected repeatedly for the TJFR Business News Reporter as one of the nation’s most influential financial journalists.

His last book, The Informant is currently in development as a major motion picture. He lives in Dallas with his wife and three children.

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Editorials(4) | Customer Reviews(25)

Editorials

Sample 3 of 4

Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story
Kurt Eichenwald


	From Publishers Weekly
	This enormous, intimate blow-by-blow of Enron's implosion gets as close to what actually happened, in terms of people making (bad) decisions in real time, as anyone who wasn't there with a concealed video-phone... read full editorial

	From Booklist
	New York Times reporter Eichenwald has now accomplished with the Enron scandal what he did with the ADM scandal in The Informant, rendering complex corporate skulduggery in the form of a page-turning financial thriller... read full editorial

	Review
	Praise for Kurt Eichenwald’s bestseller, The Informant:“Ranks with A Civil Action as one of the best nonfiction books of the last decade.”—New York Times Book Review “The thriller of... read full editorial

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Customer Reviews

Sample 3 of 25

Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story
Kurt Eichenwald


	Finally, the real story
	(Houston, TX) March 19, 2005 - 5.0/5 stars
	As someone who lived through many of the events at Enron, and who also was subjected to one of Eichenwald's probing and seemingly endless interviews, all I can say is BRAVO. So much of what I have read about this company... read full review

	The essential guide to the outcome of greed
	(Minneapolis) March 24, 2005 - 5.0/5 stars
	As a former corporate executive, I think Eichenwald's masterfully written narrative of the Enron mess is the ultimate cautionary tale. I have witnessed, on a smaller scale, how sudden and easily attained financial rewards... read full review

	It's true: It reads like a novel!
	(Sacramento, CA) November 28, 2004 - 4.0/5 stars
	This book lives up to everything it claims to be. Working at a Borders bookstore, I was privileged to read a pre-release copy (thus the early review). Not being familiar with Eichenwald's previous work, I was curious... read full review

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