Discussed in this essay:
The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, by Brad Stone. Little, Brown. 392 pages. $28.
“A shilling life will give you all the facts,” wrote W. H. Auden, tipping his hat to the biographer’s art while lamenting its utter inadequacy. Jeff Bezos, whose total conquest of e-commerce has made him one of the most famous people on the planet, has until now evaded any serious biographer. There have been shilling lives in the strictest sense, from the cut-and-paste job of Richard L. Brandt’s One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com…
