Yes, the book captivated me. But pitching it as a political thriller? Of cinematic porportions? That’s a stretch.

Dialog was pretty bland when the Enron execs went golfing with Clinton, etc. No in-depth expose of Enron’s input to Cheney’s national energy policy huddles. Nothing really revealing. More ho-hum than thrilling in terms of political dimensions.

My second nit is that so much of the book’s dialog has handsomely paid professionals beginning sentence after sentence with either “Well,” or “All right”…do people in Texas really talk like this, all the time?

My third concern is not with how the book is written. It’s with reading between the lines that hiring practices at Enron seemed to lack EEO consideration and other hiring parameters. The old-boy system seemed to enable any executive to promote someone within the company with only a casual conversation: no interview panel, no checks and balances re: who gets what opportunities to advance, no background checks. Or maybe KE just left that info out of the book because it is such a massive volume already.

Maybe I’m overly influenced by public sector, where there are constraints and formal processes when filling even executive positons. At Enron, a panel might have discerned whether candidates for CFO or Treasurer or whatever had the chops or not. With one-on-one hiring, there is less chance of perceiving flaws when the chemistry is strong between hiring official and his preferred candidate. But I don’t live in Texas. Maybe Enron’s HR impairments simply reflected standar practices within energy-related industries based in Texas.

This book was a must-read for me and I was pleased to be first at local branch library to request it. For further insight on Enron’s doings in India, read Power Politics by Arundhati Roy: a quick read and riveting.

One comment on page 148 of KE’s book:
Bonneville Power is headquartered in Portland, Oregon, not Seattle, Washington. It is a federal power marketer (selling bulk power from federal dams). There is a Seattle office, but it shrunk rapidly in the late 90s as Bonneville (BPA) restructured and downsized. (I used to work there). An Enron contract with BPA would most likely involve the Portland headquarters, not Seattle. Utilities (and ratepayers) in the Pacific Northwest are still paying for impacts of Enron’s actions in this region as well as the complications of the California energy crisis.

I am a prior fan of KE, re: The Informant. It is heartening to find in-depth writing in this age of high speed soundbites.