Amazonia

A “funny, contemplative” memoir of working at Amazon in the early years, when it was a struggling online bookstore (San Francisco Chronicle).

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.com—looks back 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, in “a clear-eyed, first-person account, rife with digressions on the larger cultural meaning throughout” (Henry Alford, Newsday).

“Marcus tells his story with wit and candor.” —Booklist, starred review