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On 5 March 2001 Fortune ran a short article by a 30-year-old staff writer under the headline “Is Enron Overpriced?”. Enron was trading at roughly 55 times earnings, and Bethany McLean asked what she called “a pretty straightforward question: How exactly does Enron make its money?” One analyst she quoted called the company “a big black box”. Before the end of the year the Houston energy company had filed for bankruptcy. McLean, a former Goldman Sachs analyst with a degree in English and mathematics, has spent the decades since following money that does not add up: through Enron, the 2008 financial crisis, the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the shale boom and the pandemic. This guide covers her 5 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 5 key books · 2003–2023 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Bethany McLean’s best-known book is The Smartest Guys in the Room (2003), written with Peter Elkind, the inside story of Enron’s collapse. Her other books are All the Devils Are Here (2010) and The Big Fail (2023), both with Joe Nocera, and two short books of her own, Shaky Ground (2015) and Saudi America (2018). Start with The Smartest Guys in the Room. Below are all five in order, plus the 2001 article that started it all.
Where to Start with Bethany McLean
If you want the book everyone means
→ The Smartest Guys in the Room (2003) — the rise and fall of Enron, from the reporters who saw it first.
If you want the 2008 financial crisis
→ All the Devils Are Here (2010) — mortgage lenders, Wall Street, rating agencies and regulators.
If you want the pandemic, followed through the money
→ The Big Fail (2023) — hospitals, supply chains and private equity.
If you want something short
→ Saudi America (2018) — the fracking boom, told through one wildcatter.
5 Bethany McLean Books, in Order
The Smartest Guys in the Room
Written with Peter Elkind, her fellow senior writer at Fortune, and published in October 2003. It tells how Enron grew from a Houston pipeline company into a trading giant under Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, and how off-balance-sheet deals hid its losses until it collapsed in 2001. It draws on hundreds of interviews and on internal documents such as calendars, performance reviews and emails. It was a New York Times bestseller and became the basis of Alex Gibney’s documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005).
All the Devils Are Here
Written with Joe Nocera and published in November 2010, it traces the 2008 financial crisis back through decades of decisions by mortgage lenders, Wall Street banks, rating agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and regulators in Washington. The authors argue that the crisis was no accident, that bipartisan policy and deregulation both played a part, and that the banks understood the risks but carried on. The title comes from Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
Shaky Ground
A short book for Columbia Global Reports about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage companies the US government took control of in September 2008. McLean follows what happened after the rescue: years in limbo, the Treasury’s sweep of their profits, the hedge funds that bought in and sued, and the plans in Congress to wind them down. The Washington Post named it one of the best nonfiction books of 2015.
Saudi America
Another short Columbia Global Reports book, published in September 2018. The first half follows Aubrey McClendon, the flamboyant co-founder of Chesapeake Energy, who raised and lost billions leasing land for drilling; the second uses his story to look at the American shale boom and the money poured into it. Kirkus Reviews praised the “focus and precision of this brisk overview”.
The Big Fail
Her second book with Joe Nocera, published by Portfolio in October 2023. It argues that the United States handled Covid badly because of choices made long before 2020: supply chains that left hospitals buying protective equipment from China, hospital chains that cut beds to protect profits, and private equity’s takeover of nursing homes. Publishers Weekly called it “among the best reports to date on America’s botched pandemic response.”
In What Order to Read Bethany McLean
Each book stands alone, so you can follow your interest. Most readers start with The Smartest Guys in the Room, her best-known book and the one closest to her own reporting. All the Devils Are Here is the natural next step: a bigger cast, the same question of who knew what and when.
Shaky Ground works best after All the Devils Are Here, since it picks up the story of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac where the crisis left them. Saudi America is the shortest and needs no background. The Big Fail, the longest, brings her method to a subject far from Wall Street.
A reading path
1. The Smartest Guys in the Room (2003)
2. All the Devils Are Here (2010)
3. Shaky Ground (2015)
4. The Big Fail (2023)
The years · 1970–2023
Quick facts about Bethany McLean
- Known for
- Asking in Fortune, months before Enron collapsed, how the company actually made its money, and then writing the definitive account of its fall.
- 1970
- Born in Hibbing, Minnesota
- 1992
- Williams College; joins Goldman Sachs
- 2010
- All the Devils Are Here, with Joe Nocera
- 2023
- The Big Fail, with Joe Nocera
- Born
- 12 December 1970, Hibbing, Minnesota; graduated from Hibbing High School in 1988
- Education
- Williams College, BA in English and mathematics (1992)
- Early career
- Investment banking analyst at Goldman Sachs, 1992–1995
- Fortune
- Wrote “The Bulldog” column; later editor-at-large and columnist
- Now
- Contributing editor at Vanity Fair since 2008; co-host of the podcast Capitalisn’t with Luigi Zingales
- Lives
- Chicago, with her two children
The red mark is 2003: The Smartest Guys in the Room, her account of Enron’s collapse.
How Bethany McLean Writes: Follow the Money
McLean starts from the numbers. Her 2001 Fortune article set Enron’s share price, about 55 times trailing earnings, against the company’s own explanations, quoted analysts who called it “a big black box”, and asked the simple question nobody could answer. She has said she was not looking for fraud at the time: “I was too naive to think fraud,” she told Barry Ritholtz in 2016. Her training as a Goldman Sachs analyst shows in how closely she reads balance sheets.
Her long books are built from documents and interviews and told through people: Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling at Enron, Aubrey McClendon in the shale fields. Two of her three long books are co-written with Joe Nocera, and The Smartest Guys in the Room with Peter Elkind. The authors stay mostly out of the story and let the record make the case.
The two Columbia Global Reports books are short and argued: each takes one tangled subject, the mortgage giants or the shale boom, and explains where the money went. Michael Lewis covers some of the same ground, the 2008 crash among it.
Watch
Bethany McLean in conversation at Stanford
In November 2023 McLean sat down at Stanford for a moderated conversation about The Big Fail: why the United States suffered so many excess deaths in the pandemic, and what that reveals about American capitalism.
Frequently asked questions about Bethany McLean’s books
How many books has Bethany McLean written?
Five, as listed on this page. Two are her own short books for Columbia Global Reports, Shaky Ground (2015) and Saudi America (2018). The other three are co-written: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2003) with Peter Elkind, and All the Devils Are Here (2010) and The Big Fail (2023) with Joe Nocera.
What are Bethany McLean’s books in order?
The Smartest Guys in the Room (2003), All the Devils Are Here (2010), Shaky Ground (2015), Saudi America (2018) and The Big Fail (2023).
Where should I start with Bethany McLean?
With The Smartest Guys in the Room, her account of Enron. If you would rather start short, Saudi America is a brisk read about the fracking boom.
What is Bethany McLean’s most famous book?
The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron (2003), written with Peter Elkind. It was a New York Times bestseller and was adapted into an Oscar-nominated documentary.
What was “Is Enron Overpriced?”
An article McLean wrote for Fortune, published on 5 March 2001. It asked how Enron, then trading at roughly 55 times earnings, actually made its money, and quoted analysts who could not explain it. It did not allege fraud, but Fortune calls it the first article to raise serious questions about Enron’s opaque accounting. Enron filed for bankruptcy that December.
Was The Smartest Guys in the Room made into a film?
Yes. Alex Gibney’s documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005) is based on the book, and McLean appears in it and is credited as a writer. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary.
What is All the Devils Are Here about?
The causes of the 2008 financial crisis, told through the mortgage lenders, Wall Street banks, rating agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the regulators who failed to stop them. McLean and Joe Nocera argue the crisis was not an accident. The title comes from a line in Shakespeare’s The Tempest: “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.”
Who are Peter Elkind and Joe Nocera?
Peter Elkind was McLean’s fellow senior writer at Fortune when they wrote The Smartest Guys in the Room. Joe Nocera is a business journalist, long a columnist at The New York Times, and her co-author on All the Devils Are Here and The Big Fail.
Is Bethany McLean still writing?
Yes. She was born on 12 December 1970 in Hibbing, Minnesota, lives in Chicago, and is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. She co-hosts the podcast Capitalisn’t with the Chicago Booth economist Luigi Zingales and is an advisor to Hunterbrook Media. Her most recent book is The Big Fail (2023).
Did Bethany McLean work on Wall Street?
Yes. After graduating from Williams College in 1992 with a degree in English and mathematics, she worked as an investment banking analyst at Goldman Sachs until 1995, before joining Fortune.
Footnotes
- Bethany McLean — Wikipedia
- Is Enron Overpriced? — Fortune, 2001
- The Smartest Guys in the Room (book) — Wikipedia
- Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room — Wikipedia
- The Big Fail — Publishers Weekly, 2023
- Shaky Ground, reviewed — Cato Institute, Regulation, 2015
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all hers.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Start with a pretty straightforward question: How exactly does Enron make its money?”
— Bethany McLean, “Is Enron Overpriced?”, Fortune (2001)
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