Dawkins' God Delusion

This past weekend I finished reading Richard Dawkins' new book, The God Delusion. Dawkins, for those who haven't heard of him before, is a well-known British biologist most famous as an outspoken advocate of evolution. (Yeah, he's the scientist spoofed on South Park having a relationship with Mrs. Garrison.) The God Delusion, which came out late last year, has been a fixture on the bestseller list and has raised a lot of controversy for its polemical criticism of religion.

I share his viewpoint that believing in the supernatural is irrational, and that religion is too often granted immunity from criticism. Dawkins' book is full of great quotes from people ranging from Douglas Adams to Thomas Jefferson that humorously buttress his points. Who knew, for example, how much that champion of modern conservatism, Barry Goldwater, detested the influence of the religious right?

The actual substance of the book, however, is uneven. As much as Dawkins is a witty and engaging writer--regardless of your views, the book is readable throughout--I doubt he accomplishes the stated goal of his book: to convert believers into atheists.

I've said before that telling people they are idiots and simpletons, or worse, is not generally the best way to persuade them of your cause. Dawkins' methods, which include using statistical improbability to show the improbability of God's existence, are not going to have the slightest effect on someone who does believe in God.

Dawkins attacks religion for engendering fundamentalism, bigotry, hostility to science, and other negative influences. Of course, it's easy to knock down such targets as the Taliban, homophobia, literal interpretation of the Bible, etc., but everyone is aware of these externalities and yet most people continue to believe in God!

A chapter on how meme theory might explain why religion is so widespread throughout human cultures was the least interesting. I guess it sounded too hypothetical. More appealing to me was Dawkins' later argument that humans can act morally without religion, which I agree with. His explanation for this is that we have nurtured altruistic genes (which better our odds of survival) through natural selection. Yet of course, while atheists are definitely capable of being good, that does not mean an absence of religion is the end of all conflict. (The aforementioned South Park episode featuring rival groups of atheists battling each others brilliantly showed how human nature inevitably leads to conflicts.)

Another point I agree with Dawkins on, though much less polemically so, is on the religious indoctrination of children. Dawkins repeats ad nauseum how a child should not be referred to as a "Muslim child" or "Christian child" because at that young an age he does not have the capability to decide for himself the matter. (No one would call a child a "Republican boy" or "Democratic girl".) I don't have a problem with children being brought up in the religious tradition of their family, but surely at some age it only makes sense that a child be free to decide for himself whether he wants to be part of that religion, another religion, or no religion at all.

Dawkins is at his best at the end of the book when he evokes the wonders of science to show how scientific inquiry reveals the universe to be even more awe-inspring and amazing than people (especially religious fundamentalists) give it credit for. I wish he had chosen to emphasize this approach more, because I think it would be the one that's most convincing.

A book like Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, which explains the scientific method and promotes rational thinking, or even the one I'm reading now, A Short History of Nearly Everything, does more to enhance science's stature and increase the general public's scientific interest. That is the best way for Dawkins to achieve his goal of a less fundamentalist, less anti-science world. Unfortunately the tone of his own book does not help.

Popularizing Science

This weekend, on my sister's recommendation, I read Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body by Armand Marie Leroi. Rest assured, the voyeuristic suggestion implied in the title is merely a narrative device that complements a thorough, thoughtful examination of genetic variations backed up by a lot of historical and cultural research. Although some of the science presented is at an advanced level (ectoderms, morphogens, and melanocytes are likely above the head of the average reader), it is all explained simply enough to be understood.

But my intent here is not to write a book review, but rather to introduce a subject that troubles me: the absence of science (meaning natural science, not social science) as a popular aspect of our cultural knowledge. Social sciences get their proper due--the shelves of bookstores overflow with bestsellers in history, politics, business, etc.--but never the "hard" sciences like biology, chemistry, physics, etc.

I am especially concerned about the dearth of scientific content aimed at the public that is both interesting and accessible to a broad audience. This is a concern given the insufficient scientific literacy of the average American, and the very real implication this has on public policy issues. I needn't remind anyone about the debates over stem cell research, global warming, teaching of evolution, and the space program, to name a few.

In fact, as the previous sentence illustrates, the only time that science seems to permeate the public consciousness is when an issue like evolution or global warming gets politicized and distorted. The media gives only a short shrift to anything that can't be framed by X-versus-Y screamfests.

Recall, for example, what surely must have been the most under-reported story of 2006: the suggestion by NASA in December that water has been flowing on Mars as recently as in the past decade (and perhaps even now.) Water! On Mars! Not in some distant galaxy a long time ago or on some moon on the outer reaches of our solar system, but right now on our very own planetary neighbor! This revelation was good for about one day in the headlines.

Publishers and producers are always looking for the Next Big Thing to push. How about something that has a built-in appeal to our sense of wonderment, something that allows us to discover more about ourselves and the world we live in? Those TV documentaries on the Discovery Channel are a good start, but we all know nobody watches those unless there's nothing else on.

Where are the 2007 Carl Sagans, some sort of physicist version of Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel) or biologist version of Steven Levitt (Freakonomics) who will pen the latest title all the book clubs want? As evidenced by the success of Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything a couple years back (which I hope to read soon), people are very curious about science. Combine a layman's earnestness with a charismatic, talented scientist-author, and I think you've got the formula for a *gasp* educational hit.

If any of you know of interesting, accessible books, magazines, websites, etc. written about natural or interdisciplinary sciences, please pass the recommendation on to me--and to others! That would be a real favor. The more that science enters into the public discussion, the better we as a society will be able to make informed decisions.

Review: The One Percent Doctrine

This past week I read Ron Suskind's best-selling new book The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11. Going in, I wasn't sure what to expect from the author of the first major book criticizing President Bush (2002's The Price of Loyalty, about then-Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, which I have not read). Yet the subject matter was compelling enough for me to pick up the book. Now that I have finished reading it, I can say that this book is important enough to be required reading for all Americans who want to understand the nature of the post-9/11 threat this country faces and how we are responding.

The titular "one percent doctrine" is a reference to a quote by Vice President Cheney, in which he opines that catastrophic threats to the U.S. pose such a great danger that our country's response must be to react those threats with a 1% chance of occuring as being a certainty. Hence, it follows, preemption, unilateralism, renditions, etc.

Probably the first question many people have regarding this book: is it a partisan hatchet-job? The answer is no, and I admit being a little surprised myself here. Suskind's reporting of America's struggle to combat al-Qaeda in the pre-Iraq War years should earn him a medal. He provides an unsurpassed amount of detail into all the successes and setbacks of various U.S. counterterrorism operations.

Some parts of the book seem like Hollywood thriller material. My favorite story involved a CIA operation targeting "al-Qaeda's banker", Pacha Wazir. Afer quietly arresting Wazir and his associates, the CIA sent a few of its specially trained agents of Pakistani descent for an amazing undercover mission. Passing themselves off as distant cousins of Wazir, and explaining the latter's absence due to a family illness, the undercover agents took over Wazir's bank and continued to receive customers. This fantastic operation resulted in the capture of dozens of key terrorists.

Yet tempering triumphs like those are maddening passages like the one detailing how the U.S. bungled the apprehension of the eventual architect of the British 7/7/05 bombings due to bureaucratic tanglings. Another troubling story concerns the capture of Abu Zubaydah, originally thought to be a major al-Qaeda leader and whose apprehension was hailed by President Bush. Problem was, Zubaydah was soon found to be just a menial agent, and worse, a certifiable schizophrenic. Suskind writes that despite this, "the United States would torture a mentally disurbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered." Zubaydah would conjure up several plot details about attacks on shopping malls, supermarkets, and banks, leading law enforcement to squander valuable resources. Even so, it must be pointed out that in what is perhaps a victory for advocates of "rough" treatment of detainees, Zubaydah finally told his interregators about Jose Padilla.

If there is any story arc to The One Percent Doctrine, it is that Suskind finds former CIA director George Tenet to be a tragic hero--he describes Tenet as being "the man most responsible, if anyone is, that America has not, again, been attacked" and laments how Tenet became the "fall guy" for the Bush administration over the lack of WMDs in Iraq. Suskind is a huge critic of the Iraq war, and toward the end of the book he takes leave of just-the-facts reporting to slam the White House (and then-National Security adviser Condi Rice especially) for the way they handled the runup to the war.

Considering that this book contains terrific reporting about so many things the American public doesn't know about the war on terrorism, I was a bit disappointed to see Suskind's personal viewpoint start to weigh heavier later in the book. Nonetheless, I stand by what I said before, that the book does not come across as overtly biased. There is definitely enough here for any open-minded reader to see both sides and come to their own conclusions.

My only other complaint about this book, one I made frequently though it is minor, is Suskind's penchant for "florid" writing. I think his terse and gripping account of terrorist plots or key Cabinet meetings would have been better off, from the reader's point of view, without being constantly interrupted by sentences like these "The connected planet creates all manner of loops, where knowledge spurs action, which is captured in image and word and then cycled back--the mythical perpetual motion machine comes to life."

Considering the insignificance of the criticisms I have mentioned, I would strongly recommend this book. Besides getting a front-row seat in the bleachers down at Gitmo Bay, I can't think of a way to feel more "in the know" about the war on terrorism than to read The One Percent Doctrine.

Siegel on The Future for Investors

I recently finished reading The Future for Investors (2005) by Dr. Jeremy Siegel, the well-known Wharton professor who authored the widely cited Stocks for the Long Run (1994). In his latest book, he outlines his methods for selecting winning stocks for the long-term in the context of current and future trends.

The major points of the book, as I saw it:

• Beware the "growth trap"
  

  In a nutshell, this means avoiding overpriced companies and industries.
  
  According to Siegel, fixating on high-growth companies or pursuing technological innovation is a mistake. (The subtitle of the book, in fact, is "Why the Tried and the True Triumph over the Bold and the New.") Such stocks often have high price valuations that indicate substantial built-in investor expectations. Thus the difference between expected and actual earnings is less, producing lower returns.
  
  The same factor can apply to industries, where he says fast growth causes increased competition amongst companies and too-high investor expectations, both of which negatively impact returns. "The financial and technology sectors expanded greatly over the past years [since 1957]," he says, "yet gave mediocre to poor returns." The three best performing sectors, Siegel says, have been health care, consumer staples, and energy--the latter of which has experienced a "significant contraction in market share."
  
  Siegel extends the "growth trap" lesson even to the issue of emerging markets. He uses the example of comparing Brazil and China. From 1992-2003, Brazil's economy grew at only 1.8% a year, less than one-fifth of China's. China, Siegel points out, also had a stable currency, no inflation problems, and political stability; Brazil was the opposite. Yet investment returns in Brazil averaged 15% a year while in China returns average -10% a year. The reason: "low prices and high dividend yield."
  

• Seek high dividend-yield stocks
  

  "From 1871 to 2003," Siegel writes, "97 percent of the total after-inflation accumulation from stocks comes from reinvesting dividends. Only 3 percent comes from capital gains." Dividends are the Holy Grail of Siegel's investing strategy. Companies that pay dividends regularly, he says, inspire shareholders' trust in management. More importantly, high dividend yields lead to higher returns, where re-invested dividends act as a cushion from a decline in price They also, due to the increased number of shares now owned by the investor, accelerate returns once a stock's price turns up.
  
  Siegel refers constantly to a list of the 20 top-performing survivor stocks of the original S&P 500. These companies, which beat the index over the past 47 years by between 2.8-8.9% a year, all paid dividends.
  
  One important point to consider here is the role of taxes, which Siegel glosses over. Of course, if you are investing in an IRA or other tax-sheltered account, this isn't a problem.
  

• Foreign markets will play a vital role in the global economy
  

  The impending demographic crisis in the developed world, Siegel warns, will have consequences. With an aging population leading to more retirees (who are also living longer) supported by fewer workers, the assets of older people will decrease in value and force the retirement age upward.
  
  However, Siegel thinks the answer lies in what he calls the Global Solution--"aging populations in the richer countries...supported by the young workers in the developing world." He posits that the growth of emerging economies like China and India will allow young people in those countries to purchase the assets of older people in developed countries, allowing the latter to enjoy "an ever-lengthening retirement without any reduction in the standard of living."
  
  The emergence of China and India, along with other promising countries like Russia and Brazil, is not without precedent. Siegel points out that in terms of U.S. per capita income, Japan has gone from 20% to 96% in the past 40 years; Singapore from 14% to 58% in the same time. In the last 25 years, South Korea has gone from 17% to 50%. I found it interesting that he says China could achieve the same goal with a productivity growth rate half of what it has averaged over the last 25 years, meaning it's more than likely to happen.
  

Those were the topics in the book I found most interesting. Siegel also covers other investment strategies, which I am not advocating here, in less detail. The strength of his book, however, lies in its discussion of the aforementioned themes. If you already have some experience with the stock market, and are interested in a look at what lies ahead, I think you'll find it worth a read.

Summer Reading Plans

One of the best things about summer break for me is that I finally get a chance to read a lot of the books gathering dust on my bookshelf. Last summer I also read a number of very good books, including Aquariums of Pyongyang and Freakonomics. For this summer I'm open to recommendations, and I've already got a short list going.

Having finished final exams last week, I jumped into Thomas Friedman's first book from back in 1989, From Beirut to Jerusalem, the only one of his books I haven't yet read. I'm a third of the way through it, but thus far it is very good. It describes his experiences as a Middle East correspondent, where he became stationed at the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war, and is considerably more action-packed than any of the future books he would write as a more high-profile journalist. Reading about Friedman's close calls with car bombs, kidnapping attempts, and rifle-toting guerrilas may lead you to have more respect for the mustachioed proponent of globalization.

There's lots more on the agenda. Presumably next up is Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq, which is supposed to be a comprehensive and non-ideological review of the Iraq war. Also today I received an Amazon.com shipment of three books: One Billion Customers and Mr. China, on the recommendation of Dr. Howard Frank, Dean of the Smith School of Business, and Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore, which looks like an interesting treatment of recent history.

Visiting Google's homepage today and seeing their stylized logo, I realize that today also happens to be the birthday of one of my favorite authors, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The complete volume of his Sherlock Holmes stories are the most entertaining, enthralling mysteries ever written. One of the highlights of my trip to England back in 2000 was seeing the actual 221B Baker Street apartment.

Many people are familiar with the well-known short stories in Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and the novel Hound of the Baskervilles, but there are many others that will draw you in. Among my favorites are A Study in Scarlet, about a gang of murderous avenging Mormons, and the underrated Valley of Fear, a dark tale about the infiltration of a secret society. If you ever have a really long plane ride and can only take one book, make it The Complete Sherlock Holmes.

Hopefully, I'll do a lot of good reading in the next few months. Hit me up if you have any suggestions!

A Crass Course in American Culture

The sight of a feeble old man being publicly humiliated is not a comical sight--and yet, I must admit I derived some satisfaction from watching Bernard Goldberg get picked apart by Jon Stewart in an interview on the latter's show a couple weeks ago. Goldberg, the former CBS newsman turned conservative commentator, was on the Daily Show to promote his new book 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (and Al Franken is #37). Appearing in front of an unsympathetic crowd on a late-night cable TV show specializing in satire, I'm not quite sure what he hoped to achieve.

Despite his unflattering performance, I nonetheless ventured to read Goldberg's book for myself. Now it would be easy to poke fun of the man for being a "square" and hopelessly "out-of-touch" when he rants about the increased proliferation of sex, profanity, and other crass elements into the popular culture. However, between his predictable take on stale subjects such as obscene rap lyrics and frivolous lawsuits, Goldberg does raise some valid points. One segment that especially resonated with me was his complaint of the cheapening of "serious news" into "murder-of-the-week crime shows or vehicles for dumb celebrity ass-kissing interviews." Having worked so long for CBS News and 48 Hours, Goldberg's anger here is palpably personal.

Yet even the occasional astute observation doesn't provide enough depth to back his claims of a depraved society. In his book, Goldberg never examines the cause of today's social trends or suggests why they are accepted and embraced by the public. Instead, he chooses to excoriate an arbitrary assortment of pop culture icons, left-wing academics, and other public figures who annoy him. The vast majority of his targets actually wield little to no influence on most American's lives. Barbara Streisand, Paul Krugman, and Paris Hilton's parents are key members of this unholy alliance which possesses such extraordinary control over public civility? The sex lives of adults today are guided by episodes of Two and a Half Men? Give me a break.

Undoubtedly the creation of "the list" of 100 people was a clever marketing ploy for the book, designed to be controversial and draw attention. On that note, it has succeeded. Yet the list also happens to be the book's downfall. What could have been an engaging analysis of American culture was instead distracted by Goldberg's selections, which do not live up to the title of the book.

The list, which is composed overwhelmingly of people with no real power, also features a majority of people that many Americans may never even have heard of. Many of Goldberg's villains--rabid feminists, liberal cartoonists, college professors, partisan polemics--make ripples only on the fringes of society. Their position outside the mainstream aside, they also happen to be products of the culture, not the cause of. Try as they might, they really couldn't succeed in screwing up America even if they wanted to!

All in all, 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America is a surprisingly readable book (even for liberals) that has its funny and informative moments. In between that, however, the book is prone to exaggeration, inaccuracy, or flat out missing the point. It's worth a read to check out for yourself the accuracy of this latest purported cultural barometer.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

The most widely anticipated book of all time was released just after the stroke of midnight, when it was "officially" July 16, 2005. Was it worth all the hype? Second in a line of several hundred at my local bookstore to receive a copy of Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince, I started reading and didn't stop until, sometime after dawn (and 652 pages later) I was finally finished.

It was terrific. The preceding book, Order of the Phoenix, though good, suffered from a sluggish plot and Harry Potter's own unlikable personality. Although The Half-Blood Prince clocks in at "only" 652 pages (more than 200 pages less than OotP), both of the aforementioned problems are remedied. Without giving away any of the plot of the new book, it is sufficient to say that it is packed from start to finish, and that the last 150 pages or so move the plot farther than the previous couple books combined! Harry himself is also once again a hero worth rooting for.

The Half-Blood Prince is also the most well-written book of the series. Rowling's trademark humor and knack for description are present, as always. However the story now includes treatments of more mature subjects, ranging from the light (teen relationships, love) to the more sober (psychological terror, graphic violence, and death). While the Harry Potter series remains a "children's series", it is quite clear that Rowling is no longer really writing for the little ones.

After two years of waiting, I'm finally finished with the sixth book and feel at a loss (and not just because of the unsettling ending). Of course, I'm already biting my nails in impatience to read the seventh book. Yet there's the regret that comes with realizing there's only one more left(!), and then this cultural phenomenon will have passed us by.

What a ride it's been.

Woodward and The Secret Man

For 33 years, the identity of "Deep Throat"--the anonymous source who helped Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein with their investigation into the Watergate scandal--was kept a secret. Finally, on May 31, 2005, 91-year-old W. Mark Felt stepped forward and admitted "I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat." Last night I finished reading Bob Woodward's new book, The Secret Man, which chronicles his long personal relationship with Felt, the former #2 man at the FBI (see right).

As Woodward reveals, the world's most famous reporter-source relationship actually began as a friendship through a chance encounter. In 1969, Lt. Bob Woodward was nearing the end of his term in the Navy and was yet undecided on his future. One day on a routine courier assignment to the Nixon White House, he struck up a conversation in the waiting room with a distinguished-looking elderly man who, as luck would have it, was Mark Felt. The young Woodward left an impression on the senior FBI man, who offered encouraging words and allowed the former to call him on later occasions for career advice.

Woodward goes on to describe how Felt's influence steered him away from law school and how he wound up deciding to try his hand at reporting. After being rejected by the Post and enduring a stint at a podunk weekly, Woodward finally managed to join the Post staff covering the lowly local crime beat. What a fateful turn of events then, that the "third-rate burglary" at the Watergate he was assigned to cover would catapult him into the rank of the most celebrated journalist of his time.

The Secret Man has been criticized some for its brisk treatment of the events of the Watergate scandal and focusing more on Woodward himself. Not that there are a dearth of enlightening and entertaining details included here--I enjoyed reading about the elaborate system of communication Felt devised in order to set-up their clandestine meetings in that famous underground parking garage.

Anyhow, I don't find fault with Woodward for skimming over the Watergate story; after two bestselling books (All the President's Men and The Final Days) about the era, and thirty years of looking back, that story is familiar enough. What is most interesting to me, then, is the story of Woodward himself--how he was able to do what he did and what he was thinking along the way and since. Woodward is the first to admit in his book that despite the warm relationship he once had with Felt, that bond in later years--especially during Felt's post-Watergate legal troubles--was broken. For almost twenty years, until 2000, he had in fact not even spoken to Felt. In The Secret Man's most moving chapter, Woodward describes his emotional reunion with an aged Mark Felt whose memory has deteriorated. Woodward says he has always wrestled with the effects of Watergate on himself and Felt. After Felt's 1980 conviction he realized:

For me, Watergate had been a cleansing. For him, it was...the opposite. The two of us saw his actions and their results so differently. I realized, but any reflections on the unfairness of it all only added to my growing feelings of personal responsibility for his plight.

The Secret Man combines journalistic history with a personal memoir. Woodward also covers the post-Watergate hunt for Deep Throat, the wrong predictions, close calls, and even one who got it right--and kept the secret. Still, if you come to this book looking for all the answers, you will be disappointed--even Woodward himself admits this, citing Felt's diminished mental condition as the reason why we will never completely know why or how. Oddly enough, I kind of like it that way. Carl Bernstein, Woodward's investigative partner during Watergate, closes the book with a "Reporter's Assessment" that also makes for a good read--especially the moment when he first realized "Oh my God. This president is going to be impeached."

Barring a forthcoming cogent and engaging memoir by Mark Felt himself, this book will be the last important treatment of the Watergate scandal. As the most illuminating personal guide to the most famous political saga in recent history, The Secret Man is a compelling read.

Enron's "Conspiracy of Fools"

"These people who made $50 million a year, they destroyed the company because of their greed."

"How will I be able to file for unemployment and food stamps?"

-- Enron employees react after the layoff of 4,000 workers in Dec. 2001

We all remember the basic story: Enron Corporation had long been a giant in the business and political world. Its fall came swifter than anyone could have imagined. In 2001, as evidence of staggering corporate malfeasance slowly came to light, Enron's stock fell from $85 to a mere $0.30, ruining the lives of thousands of investors and employees. Enron also turned out to be just the first in a series of high-profile companies whose fraudulent practices were exposed, turning the first half of the decade into the era of robber barons getting their comeuppance. Out of the wreckage, Congress would pass the controversial Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the most important securities reform since the New Deal.

Now in a recently released book, Conspiracy of Fools, New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald recreates the long and twisted saga of the biggest corporate failure ever. In a 750+ page account written in the style of a John Grisham thriller, the book is a blow-by-blow detailed account that chronicles Enron from its very beginning to its disastrous end. Along the way, we are introduced to the whole infamous cast of characters, led of course by Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, and Andy Fastow.

The first 2/3 or so of the book makes for a decent read, but isn't particularly scintillating. Eichenwald starts back more than a decade from the events of 2001, to show how everything came to happen the way it did, but occasionally while I was reading this section I was impatient to get to the thick of the story. Furthermore, Eichenwald's detailed description of Enron's complex financial maneuvering are rife with technical jargon aimed a bit above the average reader. While the laymen such as myself get the general idea that something is going wrong, Eichenwald's efforts here would probably be better appreciated by a reader with a background in accounting or finance. Still, the story of Enron is a long and complicated one, and Eichenwald does a good job (in the space of about 500 pages) to bring all the key pieces of the puzzle together.

With the setup complete, the book dazzles in the last 250 pages, moving at breakneck speed to keep up with Enron's stack-of-dominos collapse. Conspiracy's most page-turning moments come with its "insider" perspective on an out-of-control train wreck. Everything is there: the futile efforts of Enron insiders to notify the company of trouble ahead; the executive coverups and insistence that everything was okay; and of course, the ultimate, tragic demise. The story is well-written and superbly told--as I turned through the last pages of Conspiracy of Fools, I was left profoundly saddened by the culture of incompetence and arrogance Eichenwald reveals.

The book has its share of heroes and villains, though the former group obviously fights a losing battle. Eichenwald's chief protagonist and Bad Guy is Enron's CFO, Andy Fastow, who ruined Enron with his phony financial shenanigans and embezzled millions of dollars for himself, family, and friends. Eichenwald has drawn some criticism for not focusing as much on Enron's president, Jeff Skilling (portrayed as emotionally unbalanced and easily manipulated), and CEO Ken Lay (portrayed as a mostly clueless figurehead). On this note, I too find fault with Eichenwald. Regardless of the level of direct complicity on the parts of Skilling and Lay, they are at fault for allowing what went on to ever happen. Positions of great power come with the necessity to exercise responsible oversight, especially when the stakes are as high as they were.

All in all though, Kurt Eichenwald has done a terrific job in putting together a readable, informative, and entertaining presentation of one of the most important events in recent American history. Conspiracy of Fools tells a story too important for us to forget.