The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron

In this tenth-anniversary edition, acclaimed investigative journalists Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind deliver the definitive account of the fall of Enron, one of the biggest scandals in corporate America history.

Meticulously researched and character driven, The Smartest Guys in the Room takes the reader deep into Enron’s past--and behind the closed doors of private meetings. Drawing on a wide range of unique sources, the book follows Enron’s rise from obscurity to the top of the business world to its disastrous demise. It reveals as never before major characters such as Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, and Andy Fastow, as well as lesser-known players like Cliff Baxter and Rebecca Mark.

It is a story of greed, arrogance, and deceit--a microcosm of all that can go wrong with American business. Above all, it’s a fascinating human drama that has proven to be the authoritative account of the Enron scandal. In this tenth anniversary edition, McLean and Elkind revisit the fall of Enron and its aftermath in a new chapter.

Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind collaborated on this book when they both were Fortune senior writers. McLean, a former investment banking analyst for Goldman Sachs, is now a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and lives in Chicago. Elkind, an award-winning investigative reporter, is now an editor-at-large for Fortune and lives in Fort Worth, Texas.