Customer Reviews

House of Cards: Confessions of an Enron Executive

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The book opens with a "shockingly" hateful e-mail the authoress had received from a co-worker. Within 10 pages, you'll be in the mood to send her something similar. This is a sustained self-absorbed whine from a malingering, low-level paralegal who was certainly not an "executive." As worthless as the authoress may be, the book is actually well written, so if you want to know which other Enron paralegals went bar-hopping without panties, or read fantastic concoctions seeking to "explain" the rumors that she believes were circulating about her, have fun watching the traffic accident. Although she was not around anything important, and did not uncover anything (although she does believe that her own failure to understand how gas pipeline pressure works was a discovery of some sort of big fraud; and also cries foul when Rebecca Mark's husband reserved internet domain names she was supposed to, yet somehow never got around to), she does discuss one or two of the other frauds she had nothing to do with. If you're a low-level grunt absorbed with malicious interoffice gossip, and are interested in knowing what it was like to be a low level grunt at Enron from another person absorbed in malicious interoffice gossip, this book is for you. Otherwise, pass.

I see that this book is getting glowing reviews and I'll admit I did enjoy reading most of it. But, there are some things about it that just gave me a feeling that the picture the author painted may have been distorted, exaggerated and not really very objective. I can't say I'm sure this is the case, but there were just a lot of flags that kept popping up that made me wonder.

To begin with, the book is supposed to "Confessions of an Enron Executive". The only thing she "confessed" was that almost everyone at Enron she dealt with was dishonest, crooked, mean spirited and/or incompetent. She, on the other hand, was a paragon of hard working virtue. Next, she wouldn't fit any reasonable definition of an executive. She was a contract administrator and a fairly high level administrative assistant. She also had a number of very strange situations from her personal life, many of which predated her Enron job. She may have presented all of them in a fair and honest light, but there were some that were hard for me to believe happened just the way she described. She mentions an online search she did on Mark's husband, Jusbasche, and the indictment he had been under, but I couldn't duplicate that with Google or with a multiple search engine tool. I'm not saying he wasn't indicted, but I wonder where she really got the information. This is rambling, but I just kept getting the feeling that I was maybe getting a highly biased and possibly very distorted account of what happened. Maybe that's why "Harper Collins Signed then Refused to Publish". Maybe their bs detector went off too often.

I picked up this book to read as the whole concept of how corporations operate and create complex and often dysfunctional human ecosystems is one that is of interest to me. The first few pages grabbed me and kept me riveted to the story.

The book is quite simply put - amazing. I don't necessarily mean that in a good way though. It is basically the story of a lower level employee at Enron, who describes in intimate detail the soap opera saga within the employee ranks at Enron during the high growth and fast fall of the company.

The highlights include the fact that the book is well written. The author has a flair for the dramatic which plays out on nearly every page. Her descriptions of others physical appearance, interpersonal styles and even body odor are comical. The book also captures the "feeling" many employees have when working in a fast paced and hectic corporate environment. She captures the gossip, paranoia, back stabbing and depictions of perhaps the worst office politics of all time in action, with an alarming clarity. This is no "Dilbert" anecdote, but rather a bizarre "Lord of the Flies do Corporate America".

However, despite that fact that it is eminently readable, there are some major holes here. First, the title is totally misleading. She was in no way an "executive" or even anything close to it. Second, if even half of this is true, she has described the worst work culture in history. The mafia has better values than how she depicts Enron. How in the world does she have all this information? She describes taking documents, hundreds of them, from her company. In addition to her own theft and violation of basic principles and responsibilities of being an employee, she was a malingerer, often focused far more on the gossip than her work. Her attempts to appear to be a victim of this organization fail miserably. More likely, she was part of the problem herself.

Overall, I would say that if you like intrigue and can suspend your disbelief; this book makes for a fascinating look at the worst of corporate politics. No one and I mean no one, comes out of this book looking even close to being an honorable or intelligent or even a decent person. It is indeed written well, her prose is often hilarious, and the book flies by. As for being a credible look inside Enron? If that is what you seek, look elsewhere.

I worked with Lynn Brewer at Enron, known first as Eddie Lynn Morgan, then as Lynn Morgan. She was a Senior Specialist not an executive. Her role as a whistleblower at Enron is laughable. She created training sessions for other employees. Ironic that she purports to be an expert on ethics and integrity - doesn't that mean you should be truthful?

This book has been re-issued as Confessions of An Enron Executive: A Whistleblower's Story. The new version is essentially the old version, perhaps with a few minor corrections.

"House of Cards" reads like the plot outline for a soap opera on steroids. If this story had been brought to a movie studio by the author to "pitch," she would have been told that the movie-going public would find its main characters far too corrupt to be even miniimally believable. The most unlikable and ruthlesss characters in "Glenn Garry, Glenn Ross," "Wall Street," or "Boiler Room" seem like models of ethical business practice when compared to Jeff Skilling, Ken Lay, Andy Fastow and Rebecca "the Shark" Mark.
Brewer's account of the seemingly limitless arrogrance and greed of many of the Enron executives in their personal as well as business lives is simply beyond amazing. They believed, it seems, that the top floors of the Enron Building were a newer and better Mt. Olympus from which they could manipulate the lives of "mere mortals" at whim, especially if they could add to their own personal coffers in the process.
I was enthralled and appalled by turns as I read. That Lynn Brewer could find any humor at all as this corporate Hindenberg approached the mooring mast carrying her career aboard, attests to her resiliency and sense of perspective. Following her story from initial excitement to be workng for a companty whose mission statement included such phrases as "respect for individuals" and "personal and corporate integrity," to her total disillusionment is fascinating reading. "House of Cards" has the kind of "page-turner" pace usually reserved for Stephen King-type horror fiction. A definite must-read for anyone who owns stock (or is thinking of owning stock) in any company.

I don't normally read books about corporations, but I bought the book after hearing a radio interview with one of the authors. I can honestly say that there is never a dull moment in this book. It was riveting reading about these Enron Executives and the level of delusion they operated at, not to mention the absolute lack of responsibility and accountability they all exhibited. Brewer's account of her harrowing years at Enron was pretty amazing and her self-analysis through the book is funny at times and downright heart wrenching at other times. One can't fault her for wanting to make money like most of us, but her ethics kept her from crossing over the line. Overall a fascinating tale of American greed at its worst!

I have read a few books regarding the Enron scandal. This one is definitely very entertaining.

Lynn Brewer was an executive at Enron. Her detailed inside perspective goes well beyond what you will read in other books no matter how many interviews those other authors conducted. Lynn's story is personal, compelling, and shocking. The amount of backstabbing and office politics that went on is astounding. You will be surprised at how awful it was to work there.

Imagine having your Enron interview go well but not getting hired afterward. Then a headhunter calls about a week later with a solid offer for another Enron position. After getting hired your manager tells you to get rid of two slacker employees in the department. The attempt goes badly and the manager denies any wrongdoing. You are left holding the bag. And so your career at Enron has begun.

Brewer shows the reader how Enron executives fit into one of two categories: those who had no idea how Enron was making its money, and those who knew everything was a scam, a house of cards. It will not take the reader very long before he/she understands that Enron's top leaders knew exactly what they were doing despite their later testimony after the failure of the company.

Don't miss this one. It is among the best of the Enron books.

Written by former Enron junior executive Lynn Brewer, with the assistance of Matthew Scott Hansen, House Of Cards: Confessions Of An Enron Executive is an insider view of the scandals, secret deals, corruption, and shocking revelations that led to the collapse of the Enron financial empire, and with it, the investment portfolios of countless unaware investors and stockholders. A very personal and insightful story, as well as a parable about the corporate greed that infests the worst side of human nature, House Of Cards is an invaluable expose and highly recommended reading for anyone wanting more than what newscast headlines and speculative television "talking heads" commentators had to say.

What a great book. Despite everything you have read in the newspapers, this book gives the reader an exceptional inside review as to the actions, and inactions at Enron. The author pulled no stops when she offered the truth that many were not looking to share.

I found this book to be extremely interesting, somewhat sad as to how management attempted to run such a large organization and how millions of people lost billions of dollars due to greed, poor management and unbelivable business skills.

This book was again, extremely interesting and worth the read.

Carl Rizzuto
Hobe Sound, Florida