Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story by Kurt Eichenwald (2005)

Welcome to the world of smoke and mirrors! Based on the timeline presented in the book, Enron was cooking the books for longer then a decade, booking future revenues in current year, allowing executives to run money losing projects and receive enormous bonuses at the same time. And all this with very little or no words from their internal and external accountants and auditors. With many executives being visionary, which worked in earlier years moving Enron from a "simple" pipeline company into the political and international scene, the actual function of a corporation, as in making real profit for its shareholders, got lost in the shuffle. The offshore corporations created to hide money losing ledger entries of failing projects was simply a natural outgrowth of these previous practices, and probably most nobody even batted an eye, even if noticing them. Add to this the endless stream of individualistic corporate executives and their power struggles, and you got a page turner on your hand. Too bad that looking back at historical timelines does not help the workers and investors of Enron with their financial and emotional losses.