- Greed and the desire for power often lead to unconscionable acts of fraud and deceit — this theme isn’t new, but the popular book “Bad Blood,” detailing the rise and fall of healthcare startup Theranos, certainly reminds us of its truth.
- If you’re interested in similar well-written and well-researched books about business scams and scandals, these 16 fascinating books tell you everything you need to know.
- From the financial industry to cars to sports, they paint a picture of how business scams are built, how they subsequently crash, and how all the involved players are affected.
Like scores of other readers across the country, I was recently enraptured by the Silicon Valley nightmare tale of Theranos, the healthcare startup that promised to revolutionize blood testing and seduced notable investors, large pharmacy partners, and hopeful customers alike. It never delivered on this promise, but blew through hundreds of millions of dollars and harmed countless livelihoods along the way.
Unfortunately, instances of corporate deceit and fraud like this aren’t new. When power and money are at stake, people often trade in their consciences for more immediately gratifying rewards — and face the consequences when their elaborate schemes spiral out of control.
Theranos now joins names like Bernie Madoff and Enron, forever cemented in history and the syllabi of business ethics courses, as lessons of questionable business practices that you don’t want to believe actually took place. You often only hear about the devastating end result of these scandals, but these books bring you back to the beginning and weave fair, thoughtful tales about how they all transpired.
For a fascinating and often horrifying look into how not to run a business, read these 16 books about some of the biggest corporate scandals and scams of our time.
Captions provided by Amazon and edited for length.
“Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup” by John Carreyou
In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup “unicorn” promised to revolutionize the medical industry with a machine that would make blood testing significantly faster and easier.
Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at more than $9 billion, putting Holmes’s worth at an estimated $4.7 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn’t work. A riveting story of the biggest corporate fraud since Enron, a tale of ambition and hubris set amid the bold promises of Silicon Valley.
“The Wizard of Lies” by Diana B. Henriques
Who is Bernie Madoff, and how did he pull off the biggest Ponzi scheme in history? These questions have fascinated people ever since the news broke about the respected New York financier who swindled his friends, relatives, and other investors out of $65 billion through a fraud that lasted for decades. Many have speculated about what might have happened or what must have happened, but no reporter has been able to get the full story — until now.
A true-life financial thriller, “The Wizard of Lies” contrasts Madoff’s remarkable rise on Wall Street, where he became one of the country’s most trusted and respected traders, with dramatic scenes from his accelerating slide toward self-destruction
“Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron” by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind
Like its subject, “The Smartest Guys in the Room” is ambitious, grand in scope, and ruthless in its dealings. Unlike Enron, the Texas-based energy giant that has come to represent the post-millennium collapse of 1990s go-go corporate culture, it’s also ultimately successful. Penned by Fortune scribes Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, the 400-page-plus chronicle of the scandal digs deep inside the numbers while, wisely, maintaining focus on the “smart guys” deep-frying the books.
The likes of paternal but disengaged CEO Ken Lay, cutthroat man-behind-the-curtain Jeff Skilling, and ethically blind numbers whiz Andy Fastow vividly come to life as they make a mockery of conventional accounting practices and grow increasingly arrogant and bind to their collective hubris.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
