Anatomy of Greed: The Unshredded Truth from an Enron Insider [Hardcover]

Brian Cruver (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 25, 2002

Brian Cruver was a firsthand witness to the disturbing, surreal, and hilarious moments of Enron’s long dance with death. When he first entered Enron’s office complex, “the Death Star,” he was the epitome of the Enron employee: young, brash, sporting a shiny new MBA, and obscenely overpaid. From his first day, however, when he was told that some colleagues hadn’t really wanted to see him hired, he found himself in the middle of a venal greed machine whose story unfolded with all the absurdity and frustration of a tale by Kafka crossed with Tulipomania and Liar’s Poker. While Cruver’s book examines the accounting tricks, the insider stock trades—and in a special section, how the grossly lucrative fraudulent partnerships were structured and funded—it also describes everyday life as an Enronian—cocky wheeling and dealing, the sex ’n keg party on the trade floor, casual conversations at the shredder, and the insidious group-think that made Enron employees unquestioningly accept propaganda spoon-fed them by Ken Lay, Jeffrey Skilling and others, such as Tom White, then Vice-Chairman of Enron Energy Services, now Secretary of the Army under George W. Bush. Part of a team with rare “double” access to both external customers and internal systems, Cruver reveals the twisted reality behind the world’s perception of Enron as one of the world’s great corporations. Demonstrating a clear understanding of how business issues intertwines with human foibles, Cruver exposes Enron’s flaws in an entertaining way all readers can understand. A portrait of the author as a young Enronian, Anatomy of Greed reveals the sting of reality, humility, and pain felt by a man whose idols turned out to be fools and scoundrels, and who learned that there is more to life than stock options. Soon to be a TV/film drama, this is a gonzo chronicle that goes behind the scenes to chart the decline and fall of the world's weirdest and richest business cult.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Having received his MBA degree in 1999, Cruver was hired by Enron in late March 2001 to be part of a bankruptcy-trading group. Through Cruver, we see how a typical Enron employee viewed the company's dramatic collapse. He talks about the initial concerns when CEO Jeff Skilling resigned, worries of layoffs as new falsifications of financial statements came to light, and the idle days of going to work after most operations had ceased. Although expressing resentment at the millions made by top executives, he writes with a wry sense of humor. He tells how, even after he was fired, Enron accidentally kept paying him for months. He also recounts that when he was first hired, some employees jokingly referred to Enron as the "Crooked E," supposedly because of its slanted-E logo. The book's title is deceptive in that the author was an insider only in the sense that he worked for Enron. Except for one unidentified source, most of the book's information about Enron's fraudulent accounting practices came from public sources. Still, because Cruver's fast-paced book puts a human face on the many employees hurt by the Enron and similar scandals, it is recommended for most business collections.
Lawrence R. Maxted, Gannon Univ. Lib., Erie, PA
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Cruver was hired as a senior manager at Enron in March 2001 to develop products and markets for bankruptcy risk management, a complex commodity concept that the company invented. During his tenure there, Enron stock plunged from $61 a share to mere pennies as the stock was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. He got close enough to sources at the top to understand the complicated web of partnership arrangements that kept huge debts off the books while lining the pockets of top Enron executives. Cruver details how from his first days at Death Star (the unofficial nickname for the giant Enron complex), he witnessed a surreal corporate culture that hired and fired ruthlessly in search of the best and brightest, especially those who could keep their mouths shut about bad news. The company had evolved from a simple natural-gas provider to a complex entity that traded in abstract commodities while holding virtually no real assets. This house of cards eventually came tumbling down, beginning with the resignation of CEO Jeff Skilling and ending in bankruptcy, layoffs and the well-known public scandal that followed. Cruver succeeds in making sense of the whole mess while also generating sympathy for the hapless employees. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 366 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf (July 25, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786710934
• ISBN-13: 978-0786710935
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (58 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,460,406 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars totally unexpected - hilarious!, August 17, 2002

By 

"tomwilk2" (Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Anatomy of Greed: The Unshredded Truth from an Enron Insider (Hardcover)

I bought this book thinking I would just learn about the Enron mess, and HOLY COW was I surprised! A tragedy? Yes, but also absurd. As strange as it sounds I was laughing out loud, couldn't put it down because it was fun to read. The author does explain Enron's business and what happened, and as he says it's "not about energy"...but this book also takes you through Enron's wacky culture, with real people and real events as they unfolded from the inside. I felt like I was getting the real story, with political and media agendas brushed aside. Anyone working in the corporate world should read this book to understand how/why Enron failed and to learn what the signs are (the signs that the author and others at Enron missed). This is one of those rare non-fictions that doesn't put you to sleep. A fun, easy, and extremely informative read!!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars First Enron Casualty to Get Revenge!, August 27, 2002

By 

doomsdayer520 (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Anatomy of Greed: The Unshredded Truth from an Enron Insider (Hardcover)

Brian Cruver was an expendable middle manager in one of Enron's flimsy business ventures, and got laid off when the company went into its infamous bankruptcy. So in this book we get an antidote to the far more common news accounts of Enron that have focused on the plight of ripped-off stockholders or the criminal actions of the executives. In this very readable and unexpectedly funny book, Cruver describes the collapse of the company from the point of view of hapless employees who only knew a little about what was going on, but couldn't do anything about it as they were too far away from the real power. We also get great insights into the plight of the thousands of laid off employees who had to comprehend the debacle they had witnessed, and try to shake off their reputation as former "Enronians."

As a sort-of insider, Cruver has unique insights into the bizarre Enron corporate culture that demanded profits at the expense of ethics or even common sense. Cruver theorizes that the root of this evil was the company's ridiculous peer-review process, in which getting a favorable rating meant keeping your job, and the rating was tied to your generation of profits above all else. Thus every single employee was under immense pressure to inflate profit reports, ignore bad news, and crush all their co-workers. This went all the way to the top, as executives went to the extremes of unethical behavior to increase "shareholder" value. Executives also saw the whole company as a way to enrich themselves, through shady business ventures, partnerships with non-existent companies and entities, and a brazen disregard for accounting rules. Thus we have a group of greedy and power-hungry execs who forgot that they were running a real business with employees, customers, and vendors as they gluttonized themselves.

Cruver does a great job describing the basics of Enron's disastrous accounting shenanigans, that made the company artificially prosperous before collapsing like a house of cards, without losing the reader in technical jargon. He also aptly describes the intense hatred that employees developed for execs like Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, and Andy Fastow, who all got extremely wealthy by essentially stealing from the public market and shafting their employees. Cruver has relieved his unemployment with this highly readable book that provides many keen insights, with a dryly sarcastic humor, into the Enron disaster that you probably won't find elsewhere. I understand that a movie will now be made from this book. Looks like Cruver has himself a fresh new career.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Better than being there!, August 25, 2002

By 

"stock-picker" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Anatomy of Greed: The Unshredded Truth from an Enron Insider (Hardcover)

As an investment professional covering energy stocks I am intamately familiar with the Enron story, from it's humble beginnings in the mid 1980's to it's specatcular blowout late last year. "Anatomy of Greed" was right on the money in describing this horrible /fantastic meltdown and Cruver's insights and humor make this story educational, accessible, and entertaining for just about anyone. I have met some of the personalities in question (Lay, Skilling, etc.) and his characterizations were spot on. Likewise, his descriptions of the events that brought down the house of cards were simple enough for the lay person (sorry, bad pun!) to understand but thorough enough to see what really happened. You really get a feel for what it was like to be at Enron on the front lines while the company went from a new economy titan to the butt of late night talk show jokes. Though his time there was short, his is an invaluable perspective that outside journalists have not, nor will never be able to match. On top of which, some of the anecdotes he shares made me laugh out loud.