The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

Author: Visit Amazon's Brad Stone Page | Language: English | ISBN: 0316219266 | Format: PDF

The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon Description

Review

Winner of the 2013 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award

Chosen as aBest Book of 2013 by The Washington Post, Forbes, The New Republic, and Gizmodo, and as one of the Top 10 Investigative Journalism Books of 2013 by Nieman Reports

"Mr. Stone tells this story with authority and verve, and lots of well-informed reporting.... A dynamic portrait of the driven and demanding Mr. Bezos." -- Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

"Engrossing.... Stone's long tenure covering both Bezos and Amazon gives his retelling a sureness that keeps the story moving swiftly." -- New York Times Book Review

"Jeff Bezos is one of the most visionary, focused, and tenacious innovators of our era, and like Steve Jobs he transforms and invents industries. Brad Stone captures his passion and brilliance in this well-reported and compelling narrative." -- Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs

"Stone's account moves swiftly and surely." -- New York Times Book Review, "Editor's Choice"

"The Everything Store is a revelatory read for everyone--those selling and those sold to--who wants to understand the dynamics of the new digital economy. If you've ever one-clicked a purchase, you must read this book." -- Steven Levy, author of Hackers and In the Plex

"A deeply reported and deftly written book.... Like Steven Levy's "In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives," and "Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry -- and Made Himself the Richest Man in America" by Stephen Manes and Paul Andrews, it is the definitive account of how a tech icon came to life." -- Seattle Times

"Stone's book, at last, gives us a Bezos biography that can fit proudly on a shelf next to the best chronicles of America's other landmark capitalists." -- Forbes

"A rich chronicle of Bezos and his company." -- The New Yorker

"Stone's tale of the birth, near-death, and impressive revival of an iconic American company is well worth your time." -- Matthew Yglesias, Slate

"An engaging and fascinating read.... An excellent chronicle of Amazon's rise.... A gift for entrepreneurs and business builders of the new generation." -- Business Insider

"Outstanding.... An authoritative, deeply reported, scoopalicious, nuanced, and balanced take that pulls absolutely no punches." -- Adam Lashinsky, Fortune

"Fair-minded, virtually up-to-the-minute history of the retail and technology behemoth and the prodigious brain behind it.... Stone's inside knowledge of a company ordinarily stingy with information is evident throughout the book.... Stone presents a nuanced portrait of the entrepreneur, especially as he sketches in Bezos' unusual family history and a surprising turn it took during the writing of the book. His reporting on the Kindle's disruption of traditional publishing makes for riveting reading. A must-add to any business bookshelf." -- Kirkus

"Brad Stone has done a remarkable job in The Everything Store, in a way that Bezos would appreciate...." -- The Financial Times

"An immersive play-by-play of the company's ascent.... It's hard to imagine a better retelling of the Amazon origin story." -- The New Republic

"The meticulously reported book has plenty of gems for anyone who cares about Amazon, Jeff Bezos, entrepreneurship, leadership just the lunacy it took to build a company in less than two decades that now employs almost 90,000 people and sold $61 billion worth of, well, almost everything last year." -- Washington Post

"Stone has broken new ground, demonstrating the massive influence Amazon exercises not only in the retail sector, but also throughout society, including government regulation or the lack of it." -- Neiman Reports

"Offers absorbing management insights... Insiders will get a serious glimpse at an industry behemoth." -- San Francisco Chronicle

"A tome that paints a fascinating picture of a remarkable tech entrepreneur." -- The Economist

"Illuminating." -- Salon

"Stone's shoe-leather reporting is what makes the book stand out." -- GeekWire

"As fine a profile of a secretive, fast-growing company as you are likely to encounter." -- Michael Moritz, Chairman, Sequoia Capital, LinkedIn.com

About the Author

Brad Stone has covered Amazon and technology in Silicon Valley for over 14 years, for publications such as Newsweek and the New York Times. He is currently a senior writer for Bloomberg Businessweek and lives in San Francisco, California.

Product Details
Table of Contents
Reviews

Hardcover: 384 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; First Edition edition (October 15, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0316219266
ISBN-13: 978-0316219266
Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

I wasn't really planning on reviewing this book, because I was mentioned in it several times and it didn't seem appropriate. But several other people who were also mentioned in the book have already posted reviews, and in fact, MacKenzie Bezos, in her well known 1-star review, suggested that other "characters" might "step out of books" and "speak for themselves".

I was at Amazon for the first 5 years of its existence, so I also have firsthand experience of those times at the company, and I have been a fairly close observer since I left. I spent considerably more time in the Amazon work environment during those years than MacKenzie Bezos did. By and large I found Mr. Stone's treatment of that which I know firsthand to be accurate -- at least as accurate as it is possible to be at this great a remove, and with no contemporaneous documentation of the early chaotic days or access to certain of the principals. Relying on people's memories of nearly twenty-year-old events is of necessity somewhat perilous. Of course there are a few minor errors here and there, but I don't have firsthand knowledge of important mistakes much less anything that appears to be intentionally misleading. But there are a few minor glitches. In my case, I can testify that I did not, in fact, have a bushy beard at age 17 when I worked at the Whole Earth Truck Store & Catalog in Menlo Park. It was a publisher and seller of books and other things, not a lending library. It was in a storefront and was no longer a mobile service operating out of a truck by the time I worked there (p. 32). But I do not think this is a reason to disregard the entire book; it's just some not terribly relevant detail the author got a bit wrong in a way that doesn't change the story materially.

In the first chapter, the book sets the stage for Bezos’s decision to leave his job and build an Internet bookstore. “At the time Bezos was thinking about what to do next, he had recently finished the novel Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro, about a butler who wistfully recalls his personal and professional choices during a career in service in wartime Great Britain. So looking back on life’s important junctures was on Bezos’s mind when he came up with what he calls ‘the regret-minimization framework’ to decide the next step to take at this juncture in his career.” It’s a good beginning, and it weaves in nicely with what’s to come. But it’s not true. Jeff didn’t read Remains of the Day until a year after he started Amazon.

If this were an isolated example, it might not matter, but it’s not. Everywhere I can fact check from personal knowledge, I find way too many inaccuracies, and unfortunately that casts doubt over every episode in the book. Like two other reviewers here, Jonathan Leblang and Rick Dalzell, I have firsthand knowledge of many of the events. I worked for Jeff at D. E. Shaw, I was there when he wrote the business plan, and I worked with him and many others represented in the converted garage, the basement warehouse closet, the barbecue-scented offices, the Christmas-rush distribution centers, and the door-desk filled conference rooms in the early years of Amazon’s history. Jeff and I have been married for 20 years.

While numerous factual inaccuracies are certainly troubling in a book being promoted to readers as a meticulously researched definitive history, they are not the biggest problem here.

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