... fascinating and deeply researched.

Amazon Unbound is particularly valuable in explaining how the company makes money, and the day-to-day decisions that end up having a big effect on consumers: Is it worth it, for example, to sell pallets of bottled water, with their low cost and expensive shipping?.

The details are stunning and the writing so good you feel you are in the room.

Stone has produced a readable and comprehensive account of Amazon’s journey. The book will no doubt be enthralling to budding entrepreneurs who view men such as Bezos as masters of the universe. Yet I wanted to hear more about the victims of the 'toxicity' alluded to by Bray: the warehouse workers and small business sellers; the high street retailers and small companies ruined by Amazon’s unfair competition, due to the low rates of tax it pays and its near monopoly over online trade. These stories do feature in Stone’s book, yet they are dwarfed by quotes from sycophantic hangers-on and page after page of turgid minutiae, written in faintly admiring tones, documenting Bezos’s business acumen.

Stone is as much 'a student of organisations, culture, and innovation' as Bezos, and he shows his admiration for the way in which Amazon continues to use its leverage to grow, and the management techniques the Amazon founder uses. Some, such as the insistence on two-pizza teams (small enough to be fed with two pizzas), are well-known. But there is plenty of fuel here for those seeking to emulate Amazon’s success, even on a small scale.

Is the world better off with Amazon in it? Is Jeff Bezos good for anyone apart from Jeff Bezos? Brad Stone sets out to examine these questions in Amazon Unbound, a serious, informed, well-written tome, which follows his earlier best seller The Everything Store. Sadly, he fluffs it by not giving us an answer.

... more a historical narrative divided both chronologically and through the different facets of Amazon’s expanding empire. It is not a critical investigation however, and although Stone touches on issues around globalization and labor rights he tends toward a lighter touch review of how Amazon got it where it is today.