PanThe Evening Standard (UK)Is the world better off with Amazon in it? Is Jeff Bezos good for anyone apart from Jeff Bezos? Brad Stone sets out to examine these questions in Amazon Unbound, a serious, informed, well-written tome, which follows his earlier best seller The Everything Store. Sadly, he fluffs it by not giving us an answer ... The reader who has made it through 400 plus pages might feel a bit cheated at this point; like someone who works at Amazon, perhaps ... Amazon workers do appear in the book, as bit part actors in someone else’s drama. Battles with labour unions are well covered, but only as just that, a fight, rather than a matter of justice ... The ins and outs of how certain Amazon products came to exist might be a little nerdy for some tastes, but if that’s your bag, it is all here ... No one could question the depth and sincerity of Stone’s reporting, but sometimes the fan boy leaks on to the page ... One problem with the book is its approach to politics – just another irritant to be gamed. There are good accounts of whether Amazon might win big government contracts, none of whether it should ... Ultimately, like most American books about business people, it admires Bezos more than it is ever going to scald him. In US books, certainly those written by senior editors at Bloomberg, the very rich man is always going to be a hero. Perhaps the book we need here is from someone who understands the business world as much as Stone, but doesn’t revere it. Someone who doesn’t think a billion made is good in itself; that the means should be justified.
