Before it went bankrupt in 2001, Enron (ENRNQ) was considered one of the best companies in the world.  Fortune magazine named it "America’s Most Innovative Company" six years in a row. 

Enron's president, Ken Lay, was featured in the book, "Lessons from the Top: The Search for America's Best Business Leaders" where he was lauded for producing annualized shareholder returns of up to 40 percent. Alas, those returns turned out to be more imagination than innovation.

Maybe we should have known because the Enron logo was crooked E.  Maybe board action to waive the ethics policy should have alerted us to problems.  But they didn't.

It all looked so very good until, suddenly, it didn't.  When things started to come apart it was like watching the rats run down the anchor rope.  Except that the big rats ran first and told the little ones to stay with the ship.

While shredders burned out their motors and executives worked on their alibis, Ken Lay stepped up to say that things weren't really bad.  He urged Enron employees not to sell their company stock, the stock that funded many retirements.

He sold his own stock, though, and scampered down the anchor rope as the Enron ship sank like the Titanic.  Then the legal fun began.

The three key players in all of this have been Lay, Jeffrey Skilling who was CEO both after Lay and before him, and Andrew Fastow the financial mastermind and the guy they had to waive the ethics policy for.  Each has his special defense for the actions that ruined the company and vaporized the retirement funds of thousands.

Mr. Lay seems to be saying that he did nothing wrong.  Ok, maybe it was unethical, but it wasn't illegal.

Mr. Skilling says he knew nothing.  It wasn't anything he had anything to do with.  He exited stage right, washing his hands like Pontius Pilate or, perhaps, Lady Macbeth.

Mr. Fastow has rolled over on his former bosses.  He has plea-bargained his punishment down to manageable levels while ratting out everyone he can think of and offering details of his financial schemes to prosecutors.

This is in the news now, because Lay and Skilling have finally come to trial. If you want to keep up with that trial and the whole Enron saga, here are some resources that will help.

Let's start with the web resources.  There are two newspapers who've set up excellent special coverage sections of their web sites for the Enron story.

The most comprehensive is on the site of the hometown paper, the Houston Chronicle. The best local details are here.
http://www.chron.com/news/specials/enron/

The New York Times also has an excellent Enron section. The Times coverage is more obviously "national" and benefits from having Kurt Eichenwald around to make sense of the financial dealings.
http://nytimes.com/business/businessspecial3/

Eichenwald is also the author of one of the two really good books on Enron.  His book is titled "Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story."  Eichenwald is one of best writers at explaining complex financial issues and actions.  That's strength of this book. So are two special sections that are located in the front: "Cast of Characters," and "The Primary Deals."  Those sections may be worth the price of the book because they provide quick reference no matter what you're reading. One more strength of the book is that Eichenwald had extensive access to the players.  That makes for good detail and insight, but it also, it seems to me, makes Eichenwald far more sympathetic to Lay and Skilling than other writers.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0767911784/wallybock/

The other excellent Enron book is "The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron" by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind. The strength of this book is the careful review of the corporate culture.  Writing about finances is good, but not as good as "Conspiracy of Fools."  Even so, I recommend reading both books because their strengths are complementary.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1591840538/wallybock/

If you want to see how Ken Lay and Enron were perceived around 1999, then pick up a copy of "Lessons from the Top: The Search for America's Best Business Leaders."  The risk of any book like this is that a number of the excellent executives profiled will ultimately turn out to be less than stellar leaders.  In this book that would include Lay, Hank Greenburg and Dennis Kozlowski.  But there's still lots of wisdom here that makes the book worthwhile.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0385493436/wallybock/