????我想我能理解為什么亞馬遜（Amazon）的老板娘麥肯齊?貝佐斯那么討厭布拉德?斯通為她老公及其公司撰寫的那本傳記了。原因并不是她所說的書中的那些“數不清的事實性錯誤”——實際上麥肯齊只指出了一處時間上的錯誤，也就是在傳記開頭，斯通寫道，杰夫?貝佐斯讀了一本對他很有影響的小說，事實上貝佐斯讀那本小說的時間與傳記里記載的不一致。麥肯齊給斯通的這本出色的傳記《萬有商店》（The Everything Store）只打了一星的評分，因為不管你是一個多喜歡亞馬遜的用戶，不管你多喜歡在亞馬遜上買東西，讀了這本書之后都會覺得很不舒服。

????差不多就在兩年前，我也出版了一本關于蘋果公司（Apple）的書。當時正是喬布斯的傳記風靡一時的時候，那本著作也是我們這個時代出成功的紀實作品之一。斯通這本寫貝佐斯和亞馬遜的傳記做到了一切我那本書想做到的事，也做到了沃爾特?艾薩克森在《喬布斯傳》中想做到的事。當時我幾乎沒有得到來自蘋果公司（Apple）的任何合作，而艾薩克森的那本著作幾乎得到了蘋果的傾力合作。斯通的經歷恰好介于我與艾薩克森之間。雖然杰夫?貝佐斯本人沒有接受斯通的采訪，但是貝佐斯卻允許他周圍的很多人接受了斯通的訪問，其中包括亞馬遜公司的好幾個核心高管。因此這本書權威、深入、細致、均衡地記述了亞馬遜的創業故事，絲毫沒有留后手。

????這又讓我想到了亞馬遜的用戶讀到這本書后的不適感——面對現實吧，現在還有誰不是亞馬遜的用戶？斯通把杰夫?貝佐斯刻畫成了一個冷酷狡詐、不愛惜下屬的“周扒皮”，只要是以為顧客提供更低價格的名義，任何只要不違法的行為都可以被容忍。貝佐斯在電視上給人的印象總是一副和藹可親的商人形象，有著精力充沛的爽朗笑聲。但是由于他經常發脾氣，他的高管們卻給他起了一個“怪人”的外號。在斯通的書中，亞馬遜的企業文化也很可怕，合作伙伴是可以犧牲的；如果哪個企業愚蠢到接受了亞馬遜的投資，遲早會因為被亞馬遜攫取了控制權而后悔；而且競爭對手無論大小，都是貝佐斯精心策劃的棋局中的一顆棋子。

????如果你想知道為什么我們會這么喜歡在亞馬遜購物，答案也能在書中找到。亞馬遜在早期就構建了一種軟件，能夠在網上搜索競爭對手的價格信息，并且自動匹配最低的價格。多年來亞馬遜一直避免征收營業稅，為了合法避稅，亞馬遜一直避免在美國的一些州開設實體，因此使顧客可以獲得更低的價格。（貝佐斯說，亞馬遜并沒有在那些他不想征收營業稅的州里獲得好處——說得好像亞馬遜的紅火生意是從天上掉下來的，亞馬遜沒有從中獲得好處一樣。）亞馬遜經常把零售業關于最低定價的傳統視若無物，經常與那些喜歡亞馬遜的龐大用戶群但是討厭亞馬遜公司本身的生產商玩貓抓老鼠的游戲。

????I think I know why MacKenzie Bezos hated Brad Stone's book about her husband and his company. It's not because of the "numerous factual inaccuracies" she says are in the book, though she names only one, a mistiming of when Jeff Bezos read a certain influential novel, and shame on Stone for giving her that opening. No -- Mrs. Bezos gave a one-star review to Stone's outstanding book, The Everything Store, because it will make anyone who reads it, regardless of how much they love being an Amazon (AMZN) customer, feel icky about themselves for just how much they enjoy buying things at Amazon.

????I published a book about Apple almost exactly two years ago, when one of the most successful non-fiction books of our time, a biography of Steve Jobs, was topping the charts. Stone's book on Amazon and Bezos accomplishes everything I tried to do with my book as well as what Walter Isaacson did with his biography. I had next to no cooperation from Apple; Isaacson had near total cooperation from his subject. Stone's experience falls squarely in between, and it shows. Though Bezos wouldn't give Stone an interview, the Amazon CEO allowed numerous people in his world, including multiple key Amazon executives, to talk to Stone. The result is an authoritative, deeply reported, scoopalicious, nuanced, and balanced take that pulls absolutely no punches.

????That brings me back to the ickiness that Amazon's customers -- and let's face it, who isn't an Amazon customer? -- will experience reading this book. The portrait that Stone paints of Amazon's founder and his company is of a ruthless, disingenuous, slave-driving mentality, where pretty much any kind of legal behavior is tolerated in the name offering customers lower prices. Stone portrays Bezos, known to viewers of Charlie Rose or Jimmy Fallon as the amiable businessman with the exuberant honk of a laugh, as an ogre given to "nutters," the name his executives give to his frequent temper tantrums. Stone describes a business culture where partners are expendable, where companies foolish enough to take investments from Amazon come to regret the control they handed over to the retail monolith, and where competitors big and small are mere pawns on Bezos's elaborate chessboard.

????If you've ever wondered why you love shopping at Amazon so much, the answers are all here. Amazon figured out early on how to create software that scours the web for price information from the competition and to automatically match the lowest available price. For years it avoided collecting sales taxes, deploying preposterous legal denials of its physical presence in multiple states in order to justify its actions, which resulted in customers paying lower prices. (Bezos said his company didn't benefit from local services in states where he didn't want to collect sales tax -- as if the roads leading into his warehouses appeared magically and didn't benefit Amazon.) It routinely disregarded retail-industry conventions on minimum pricing, provoking games of cat and mouse with manufacturers who loved access to Amazon's customer base but hated Amazon.