Enron

The Rise and Fall

by Loren Fox

John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2003

ISBN: 9780471237600
Pages: 370

Category: Concepts & Trends

In this summary you will learn

• How Enron became successful
• How corruption, greed and fraud brought it down

Why you should read Enron

Enron’s story seems to have happened all at once. There was a big company with a stock price shooting for the stars and, then, suddenly there was a massive fraud, and the two things came so close together it was like hearing the explosion from a fireworks display after you’ve seen the light in the sky. Loren Fox’s account was one of the first books about Enron and remains one of the best. The author is a skillful, diligent reporter who managed to get the story first and get it right, although Enron did not authorize his book or cooperate with him. His discussion of the company’s complex, illegal accounting maneuvers is thorough and, if not quite clear, certainly complete. The book was written during the relatively early stages of the legal proceedings against the architects of the Enron fraud, so a lot of the material uncovered by Justice Department and SEC investigators was not yet available. The demerit of this is that Fox was not able to include much that is now common knowledge about Enron. However, getAbstract.com finds that there is an advantage as well: Fox was not excessively guided or directed by common knowledge and conventional wisdom, but instead carved his own path through the thicket of Enron’s weird and instructive history.

About the Author

Loren Fox is a former senior editor at Business 2.0, a former Dow Jones News Service reporter and editor, and former finance editor of Upside Magazine. He has written for The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, Salon.com and others.

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