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I know it's been a while since anyone posted to this thread, but, well, tonight is when I finished the book.
Highly recommended. While reading tastes are personal and unpredictable, I think that most people who post here should find this a page-turner. I did. Plus it was a relief to escape from the violence of the last two books I read (one a spy novel, one a murder mystery).
The thesis of the book is that Jeff Bezos is the key to Amazon's vision. You could say that books like this almost always have such a great man thesis, but this time it is proved.
As for complaints that the book is anti-Bezos or anti-Amazon, these are overblown. Amazon is not a company I've ever seen on lists of best companies to work for. And it has high employee turnover. Those are facts, and a reasonable narrative has to fit them. But if you compare how Brad Stone portrays Bezos with how Walter Isaacson portrays Steve Jobs, Bezos is a saint. Yes, Bezos is portrayed as insulting his staff when he gets angry. But he is also portrayed as trying to overcome that. And his contributions to policy are shown positively. There are no stories of him pushing product features that made the product function poorly, as with Jobs (the Jobs-dictated shape of the Apple III and NeXT allegedly resulted in malfunctions, and there was something similar with antenna design on one of the iPhones). Instead, items Bezos insisted on against advice of staff, including Amazon Prime and Whispernet, are described as major successes.
Reviews on amazon.com, by former and current employees, are worth reading after reading the book. Positive or otherwise, they confirm the confrontational Amazon culture Stone describes.
As for the spouse, there isn't a word in the book against her, or against her husband, as a husband. There are few biographies of great men where you can say that.
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