The author of The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon returns with a follow-up on one of the world's largest retailers, exploring Amazon's unprecedented growth and its billionaire founder.
... fascinating and deeply researched ... Stone is at his best describing Bezos’s demanding style of management ... As he concludes his masterful book, 'Whatever you think about the company—and the man—that controls so much of our economic reality in the third decade of the twenty-first century, there is no turning back now.'
Amazon Unbound is particularly valuable in explaining how the company makes money, and the day-to-day decisions that end up having a big effect on consumers: Is it worth it, for example, to sell pallets of bottled water, with their low cost and expensive shipping? ... I was, though, left wishing at times for a...book that made a tighter connection between the inside of the juggernaut and its effects on the world ... Significantly, the book is also very much a biography of Bezos. And that makes it timely at a moment when our economy is dominated by giant firms headed by a small handful of men, whose personalities and whims we need to understand whether we like it or not ... As biography, the book is both limited and perhaps strengthened by the fact that Stone has lost his former access to Bezos ... It’s safe to say that Amazon Unbound does suffer at times from a lack of psychological insight into Bezos. But it benefits from the author’s distance, and makes for a dense, at times juicy tour of the company Bezos built.
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.
