Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot.Com Juggernaut
    Unavailable
    Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot.Com Juggernaut
    Unavailable
    Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot.Com Juggernaut
    Ebook286 pages5 hours

    Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot.Com Juggernaut

    By James Marcus

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    In a book that Ian Frazier has called a fascinating and sometimes hair-raising morality tale from deep inside the Internet boom,” James Marcus, hired by Amazon.com in 1996 when the company was so small his e-mail address could be james@amazon.comlooks back a decade later at the ecstatic rise, dramatic fall, and remarkable comeback of the consummate symbol of late 1990s America.

    Observing how it was to be in the right place (Seattle) at the right time (the 90s)” (Chicago Reader), Marcus offers a ringside seat on everything from his first interview with Jeff Bezos to the company’s bizarre, Nordic-style retreats, creating what Jonathan Raban calls an utterly beguiling book.” For this first paperback edition, Marcus has added a new afterword with further reflections on his Amazon experience.

    In the tradition of the most noteworthy and entertaining memoirs of recent years, Marcus offers us a modern-day fable, a clear-eyed, first-person account, rife with digressions on the larger cultural meaning throughout” (Henry Alford, Newsday).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe New Press
    Release dateApr 5, 2011
    ISBN9781595587220
    Unavailable
    Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot.Com Juggernaut

    Read more from James Marcus

    Related to Amazonia

    Related ebooks

    Business Biographies For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Nick Moran

      Dec 8, 2019

      All of us are viewing but one face of the cultural sphere. The one I see will always be different from yours, but damned if I won't try to show it to you. The post A Year in Reading: Nick Moran appeared first on The Millions.

      8 min read

    • Article

      Southern Discomfort: The Millions Interviews Snowden Wright

      Jan 31, 2019

      Southern stories require at least one dog, but it does not have to have four legs. Southern stories know how to whistle but not necessarily "Dixie." The post Southern Discomfort: The Millions Interviews Snowden Wright appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Duplex

      Jun 9, 2020

      I moved to Los Angeles to sing. When was this? August? June? I was twenty-nine, and those were shapeless months, when the days blended together and I refused to pull them apart. My landlord was unusually close to her adult son. His name was Jeffrey,

      21 min read

    • Article

      Table Talk

      Sep 1, 2023

      Table Talk
      10 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Tim Lane

      Dec 8, 2021

      We stopped at the Topaz Internment Camp, where my wife’s family was held during World War II, near the tiny town of Delta, Utah. We found the apocalyptic remnants of one of our country’s great shames. The post A Year in Reading: Tim Lane appeared fi

      7 min read

    • Article

      A Year In Reading: Garth Risk Hallberg

      Dec 18, 2021

      Simply put, Yoon Choi is the most ambitious and accomplished practitioner of the Chekhovian short story to appear in many years. The post A Year In Reading: Garth Risk Hallberg appeared first on The Millions.

      9 min read

    • Article

      The Creative Life: How We Do It (Any Way We Can)

      Sep 29, 2017

      We’re everywhere.  Poets and children’s book writers.  Novelists and memoirists.  Painters and sculptors, dancers and actors. We clean your teeth, snake the clogs in your drain, and drop off color copies to your desk during the week.  The post The C

      4 min read

    • Article

      Justin Timberlake and the Whoever of Whatever: Fame Drags You Down.: Fame drags you down.

      Sep 19, 2013

      About six years ago, I was putting a new roof on a 200-year-old house on an island in Maine when I got a call from Justin Timberlake’s cousin and assistant, a girl named Melissa. I put down my nail gun, told my boss I was taking five, and answered.

      22 min read

    • Article

      Tom Wolfe, 1931–2018

      May 15, 2018

      Tom Wolfe, 1931–2018
      6 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Garth Risk Hallberg

      Dec 3, 2017

      One thing you could always say for me: I was a finisher. I may not have been a great reader, but by God I was dogged, and if I made it through the opening 10th of a book, then I was going all the way to the end. Though this started as merely an incli

      7 min read

    • Article

      Insurgent Hoop

      Sep 2, 2022

      Insurgent Hoop
      12 min read

    • Article

      The Turn

      Aug 14, 2019

      HERE’S a story. In college I entered the spring semester of my freshman year on academic probation. There wasn’t one reason this happened. There were many. I had signed up for a computer science class called Digital Security with no programming knowl

      5 min read

    • Article

      Doing It Over

      Mar 1, 2021

      Doing It Over
      8 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Lydia Kiesling

      Dec 16, 2018

      I couldn’t help noting that this reading assignment was the corner office in the women’s work of thinking about men who are not thinking about you. The post A Year in Reading: Lydia Kiesling appeared first on The Millions.

      10 min read

    • Article

      Shelf Life

      Mar 7, 2024

      When I’m writing, I’m trying to create something as beautiful as possible, but the books have to work well, first and foremost, as dark, kick-ass novels that engage the reader entirely. The bar is to write compelling stories that are effective on man

      5 min read

    • Article

      Exodus

      Sep 15, 2018

      My exodus occurred after years wandering the wilderness of my hometown. For bread to live, for bread to leave, I worked a part-time gig at the Oregonian’s downtown insert facility, stacking pallet after pallet of inky-ass newspapers. The day in quest

      15 min read

    • Article

      We’re Naked Underneath Our Clothes

      May 31, 2018

      A WRITING CLASSROOM is an intimate space, and so before I tell you about this night, years ago, when I was still what might be classified as a young professor, a fresh transplant to Indiana soil from the wilds of the Pacific Northwest via the red cla

      21 min read

    Reviews for Amazonia

    3.5/5

    47 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot.Com Juggernaut By James Marcus looks at employee number 55 of Amazon.com. Marcus is a writer answering a job interview for an internet site in 1996. One forgets how weird this was back then, but Marcus come's over as really enthralled by his new job as a book editor on this site (but not always enamoured with the technology). Marcus gets shares as part of his job (which he sell's when really low....whoops), works late hours packing over the holiday period for Amazon and talks with his boss Jeff Bezos. Slowly, as the technology and the reviews from users come's in Marcus become's more despondent in his role, but always with a smile. This even leads to Marcus penning his own reviews on the site as a joke (which back fires when he wins the Amazon prize). This book is a MUST read. Marcus comes over as a nice guy, stuck in the headlights of the biggest internet store, and laughing at the stupidity of the internal politics.I also sent him an email saying how good his book was and got a very nice response.
    • 4/5
      An interesting account of the rise and fall and rise and fall and rise of Amazon from a small company to a huge juggernaut of a store, the triumph of accountants over the book people and the triumph of Jeff Bezos' vision of an online book marketplace that has moved away from books and diversified.James Marcus spent five years, starting quite early in the company's story, with amazon and he details a lot of what happened from his point of view. It's interesting and you can see some of the pangs of regret as his job takes over his life and his life suffers.I was an early adopter of amazon and remember early days of shopping there but some of what he is proud of and remembers from then really didn't filter through all that well to my level. A shame really, but then again it was an interesting thing to watch from the outside then and interesting for me to watch from the inside now, looking back. Where amazon is going to go is anyone's guess but it has certainly carved a niche for itself in the world of books.
    • 3/5
      This is a really interesting account of the 5 years that James Marcus spent as employee #55 at Amazon.Com. I've worked at startups and dot coms and I can see the headquarters of Amazon.Com out my living room window so possibly, I had a bit more interest in the topic than your average reader, but I think it has broad appeal.