Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot.Com Juggernaut
Sign in to keep track of books you’ve read and want to read.
With Amazonia, James Marcus adds to the ever-simmering stew of Amazon.com analysis a new, almost quaint perspective: that of an employee hired for his expertise in literature. Marcus traces the company's familiar climb, plummet, and re-ascent, but this time we witness the pyrotechnics from the book-strewn hallways of the editorial department.After an abbreviated heydey, editorial talent lost cachet at the burgeoning Internet behemoth, replaced by metrics worship and automated innovations like "truncating widgets." Despite the demoralizing shift, Marcus makes evident the loyalty editors continued to display, a "quasi-religious devotion almost impossible to explain to outsiders." The concept of making history was just too intoxicating for most to abandon (as were the stock options).
Read more
Marcus's writing has enough genuine humor and self-deprecation to squelch any accusations of "optimizing for optics," or worse, whining. Aside from a few sections that feel somewhat adrift (oblique mentions of an imploding marriage and an extended Emerson sidebar) the prose is driving and the voice engaging and remarkably fair.
For anyone who worked at Amazon.com in the early days, reading Amazoniais akin to leafing through a high school yearbook (I was an Amazon editor from 1997-2002). Nostalgia is inescapable—even for the irritations of the time, like All Hands Meetings (pep rallies) and the exaltation of MBAs (the popular kids). The thing about yearbooks, though, is that we're really only interested in our own. Whether outsiders will be as captivated by this surf down virtual memory lane is questionable. For alums, it's a lasting keepsake. —Brangien Davis
Liked Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot.Com Juggernaut? Here’s where I’d start.
These suit anyone who liked Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot.Com Juggernaut. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.
-
Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble Shares business, nonfiction, memoir -
The Pampered Chef: The Story of One of America's Most Beloved Companies Shares business, nonfiction, memoir -
Show Stopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft Shares nonfiction, business, biography -
Burn Rate: How I Survived the Gold Rush Years on the Internet Shares business, memoir, nonfiction
“People who read Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot.Com Juggernaut tend to reach for these next.”
“If you want more of the same (business about technology), start with these.”
-
Typo: The Last American Typesetter or How I Made and Lost 4 Million Dollars
-
Circle of Greed: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Lawyer Who Brought Corporate America to Its Knees
-
Human Resources Management for Public and Nonprofit Organizations: A Strategic Approach
-
Unbeatable Resumes: America's Top Recruiter Reveals What Really Gets You Hired
