Amazon Unbound

Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire

By: Brad Stone

Narrated by: Pete Larkin

Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins

Publisher's summary

A Washington Post Notable Book

This New York Times best seller is a “masterful” (The Washington Post), “juicy tour of the company [Jeff] Bezos built” (The New York Times Book Review), revealing the most important business story of our time by the best-selling author of The Everything Store.

Almost 10 years ago, Bloomberg journalist Brad Stone captured the rise of Amazon in his best seller The Everything Store. Since then, Amazon has expanded exponentially, inventing novel products like Alexa and disrupting countless industries, while its workforce has quintupled in size and its valuation has soared to nearly two trillion dollars. It’s almost impossible to go a day without encountering the impact of Jeff Bezos’ Amazon, between services like Whole Foods, Prime Video, and Amazon’s cloud computing unit, AWS, plus Bezos’ ownership of The Washington Post. We live in a world run, supplied, and controlled by Amazon and its iconoclast founder.

In Amazon Unbound, Brad Stone presents an “excellent” (The New York Times), deeply reported, vividly drawn portrait of how a retail upstart became of the most powerful and feared entities in the global economy. Stone also probes the evolution of Bezos himself - who started as a geeky technologist totally devoted to building Amazon, but who transformed to become a fit, disciplined billionaire with global ambitions, who ruled Amazon with an iron fist, even as he found his personal life splashed over the tabloids.

Definitive, timely, and “engaging” (Jon Meacham, author of The Soul of America), Stone has provided an unvarnished portrait of a man and company that we couldn’t imagine modern life without.

©2021 Brad Stone. All rights reserved. (P)2021 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

A fascinating Read.

learned much more than I thought that I might about Amazon and Jeff Bezos. Definitely a great read.

Another great story by Brad Stone

I Absolutely loved this book. It's well written and well researched. A great thriller.

Great book!

I enjoyed the behind the scenes views of what made Bezos and Amazon tick. I learned a lot and enjoyed how the book unfolded.

Great book and content. Awful narration

Content is superb, no doubt.

Narration is awful. Super thick voice with words not clearly or sharply enunciated.
Hard to hear while driving unless you are fully paying attention to the narration in which case you are not paying attention to the road.

not about Amazon but about Bezos

the title lies and that’s the only reason for the 2 stars about the story. I wanted to know a lot about Amazon, and I got entire chapter about blue origin, Washington post, a divorce and a tabloid scandal. They had unfluence on amazon direction so should maybe be mentionned in passing. but there is almost nothing about actually amazon ! sSince the author explained Bezos had less time to give to amazon, this is not excusable. if you re title it as a story about Bezos and not about Amazon, it should be 5 stars

the audio quality is great however

Another Great Amazon / Bezos Read

I read Brad Stone’s first Amazon book years ago and have been waiting for the follow up for quite a while. He did not disappoint - another entertaining, insightful, fast moving story just like his first. The other reason I enjoy these stories about Amazon is because I was following Amazon’s early beginnings since 1997. I thought they were going to be an unbelievable company with tremendous potential and even purchased a few shares of it stock in 1999, alas, too few. So my interest in Amazon has been ongoing for 22 years and with Brad’s excellent writing and storytelling I really enjoyed the peek behind the curtain.

Growing into Amazon

For those looking for a “cliff note” version of how jeff bezos became one of the worlds most influential people and how he got there this book does a superb job of providing ample detail without gettin too deep into the weeds. Only critique would be that the main narrator was a bit drab so hard to listen for long periods without falling asleep or getting distracted.

Where do they find the narrators?

Enjoying the content a couple hours in, but where do they find these people to narrate? The reader constantly slurs like a drunk person, feel like I need a drink too to get through the rest of the book.

Surprisingly captivating and easy to follow.

Enjoyed this one and was surprised by how much! it really captures the ups and downs of Amazon's rise and let's the reader come to their own conclusions.

Comprehensive look inside Bezos empire

The book covers the growth of Amazon from infancy to present day. Very well written piece capturing various verticals under the Amazon umbrella. Bezos is a rock star.