About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Peter Robison
Positive The Times (UK) Peter Robison...argues in minute detail that the 737 Max 8 crashed twice because it was a botch job of a botch job ... There’s far too much Boeing history in the book for even the most dedicated aviation geek, but what saves the more corporate chapters are the aviation \'fun facts\' ... Robison’s clipped prose and eye for the small, everyday details can be dry at times but it accentuates the horror of both accidents.
Brad Stone
Mixed The Sunday Times (UK) The details are stunning and the writing so good you feel you are in the room ... In chapter after chapter you get the most detailed account you’ll ever need ... The details of the National Enquirer story are astonishing. Stone reveals in thriller movie style how Sanchez’s brother, Michael, a Hollywood agent, sells text messages and photographs that expose the affair ... It’s great stuff, but as you read you get a nagging feeling that all the juicy detail is part of an unspoken \'deal\' between Bezos and Stone. Stone will get fantastic source material, provided he does not criticise the firm too much. Many readers will feel he skates too quickly over Amazon’s failings ... Bezos’s sprawling interests and empire can leave the book feeling disjointed. The chapters could be arranged in a different order and you wouldn’t really notice because each is about something very different ... My advice? Read the ones that interest you and skip the rest.
Brian Dumaine
Positive The Sunday Times (UK) You’d think it would be easy to write a page-turner about the firm and its founder, but what makes them so successful is complicated, contradictory and controversial ... If you are an Amazon hater or even a sceptic, this is not the book for you. Critics will be enraged by what they will see as Dumaine’s efforts to forgive Amazon its sins ... What makes this book a great read, however, is the way Dumaine shines a light on the man who has made Amazon such a success ... like it or not, tenacious Jeff and his data-driven instant-gratification machine are only just getting started. Only the paranoid — and those who copy Bezos’s use of artificial intelligence to learn what customers want and recommend it before they even know they need it —will survive.
Nicholas Shaxson
Positive The Sunday Times (UK) ...Shaxson is back, with something bigger to say ... With forensic accounting analysis, sharp reporting and interviews, he demonstrates how individual company leaders, private equity advisers and the big banks, aided and abetted by government and the large audit firms, structure their businesses to increase their and their investors’ share of the economic spoils in good times, while offloading risk and the costs of failure in bad times on staff, customers and the public at large ... Some readers will find the level of financial detail, especially regarding private-equity deals, tough going. Others will feel that the tone is a little ranty and negative. But Shaxson leavens the mix with some great writing ... I wish he had set out detailed proposals for how Britain could take an independent stand against the forces of big capital. The freedom (and the chaos) that Brexit provides is a great opportunity. Better yet, it is an agenda around which the left and the right could unite, the right wishing to preserve the purity and efficiency of free markets and the left to drive social change. Perhaps that will be the subject of his next book.