The Smartest Guys in the Room

The story of Enron's rise and fall is one of innovation betrayed by arrogance and intelligence subverted by greed. Dennis Boutsikaris narrates as if he'd been there. His voice is pleasant, and he mostly keeps a good pace though that makes some complicated business and financial matters go by rather quickly. He ably uses patterns of inflection and intonation, especially a certain dryness and wryness, to express the disbelief, disapprobation, bemusement, and occasional schadenfreude the events merit. Those patterns are sometimes repetitious, but so are the patterns of human and corporate wrongdoing that fill this book. Boutsikaris makes the tawdry, sometimes-complex story easy to listen to. W.M. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine