Tech
The Everything Store, 2013, and its just-published sequel
Amazon Unbound), is an old friend. When Bezos was just a smart, driven business nerd who sold books online, Brad and I would interview him for
Newsweek and
Time respectively. Fuller disclosure: I'm the guy who nominated the bookselling nerd for
Time Person of the Year. Fullest disclosure: I own an anti-Amazon T-shirt made by the HQ2 protestors in Queens ("resist," it says above a smile logo), and also own an Amazon Echo, Kindle, and Prime account.
Our relationship with Amazon is as complicated as the company itself. On the one hand, Bezos is an innovator, a genius, a customer-focused obsessive; on the other, anti-union, proto-monopolist, pitiless kingpin who had to be dragged into philanthropy. But in the last four years, the hero side has receded and the villain come to the fore. So it's a comfort to read