Power Failure

I’ll admit: I approached *Power Failure* expecting a slog—a worthy but tedious march through balance sheets and org charts. Instead, I got hooked like it was a true-crime podcast. Cohan’s strength is his refusal to mythologize GE’s ‘golden age.’ He doesn’t just tell you Jack Welch was a ruthless operator; he shows you the human cost of his ‘rank-and-yank’ culture, the factories gutted, the R&D starved. The audiobook’s length feels justified because Cohan isn’t just chronicling a collapse—he’s building a case, and the evidence is damning. Eric Martin’s performance is pitch-perfect for the material. He resists the temptation to over-dramatize, letting the text’s inherent tension speak for itself. His pacing is deliberate, almost *legalistic* in the way he presents each damning fact, which makes the rare moments of exasperation in his tone (like when recounting Immelt’s $100M severance after presiding over a stock crash) land like punchlines. My only critique? The sheer volume of financial detail in the later chapters might lose listeners who aren’t already business-adjacent. And while Cohan’s access to insiders is impressive, I wished for more voices from the factory floor—this is still very much a *suite*-level story. But as a masterclass in how institutional rot spreads? Unmatched. If you’ve ever rolled your eyes at a corporate buzzword (‘synergy,’ anyone?), this will feel like vindication.