"These Days, All Retail Roads Do Appear to Begin and End with Amazon"

"Stone obviously admires his subject, but it’s hard to tell if he likes him. For that matter, it’s hard to tell if anybody likes him. Worth $27 billion, Bezos still makes employees pay for parking and for a time posted private ambulances outside warehouses during heat waves instead of ponying up for extra air-conditioners. It comes across loud and clear just how painful working anywhere near Bezos seems to have been over the years, despite halfhearted attempts by employees to recast a total lack of empathy as some sort of trick of leadership: one of his 'gifts,' they say, is 'to drive and motivate his employees without getting overly attached to them personally.' Is that a gift? It may be in actual war, but I’ll bet soldiers in the Middle East get more than free Gatorade and an extra 10 minutes of break time a day when the temperature tops 100 degrees."

In The New York Times, Duff McDonald reviews Brad Stone's The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon.