When I read journalism without knowing the subject well, I assume what I read is accurate. But I'm always shocked by the inaccuracy of reporting on stories I know/understand well.
I wonder whether this book is less accurate than average, or whether this review is finding only the typical level of inaccuracy.
I remember learning firsthand just how inaccurate journalism can be. My family ran a small business (a small factory) that tragically caught fire early one morning and burned to the ground. The newspaper account was ridiculous. It described how the fire sent employees "fleeing for their lives from the building". In reality, the building was entirely unoccupied at the time since it was the early morning (likely part of the reason the fire happened to begin with). I don't remember all of the details now, but reading the story, I was stunned at how wrong the overall picture was that it was painting. It was like a parallel universe. I take news accounts with a huge grain of salt now.
I'd suggest you re-read the review. She only points to one inaccuracy -- the timeframe when Bezos read Remains of the Day. Stone has acknowledged and corrected that fact for future editions.
Everything else she says is subjective. She thinks Stone portrayed Amazon as a cutthroat, sinister culture; she tries to re-frame it as an Edenic workplace. The truth is probably somewhere in between, but her version is certainly not a fact.
> When I read journalism without knowing the subject well, I assume what I read is accurate. But I'm always shocked by the inaccuracy of reporting on stories I know/understand well.
How long before you either () stop being shocked by the stories you understand, or () stop assuming the journalist is telling you the truth in stories you don't? A sentence like this makes more sense in the past tense...
When I was small, my parents taught me that if it appeared on TV, it wasn't true （they were mostly thinking of commercials, but news programs were offenders too). It may be sad, but those seem more and more like words to live by, and extend to other media.
In an archive of the thousands of thank you messages written
to Jeff over the years, a small sampling includes “I just
wanted to thank you for giving my husband the opportunity to
work for your company so many years ago and let you know
that he always spoke kindly and enthusiastically of the
distribution center, the people and you.” “Having finished
my shift I thought I would send you a short email to say
thank you. There is a fantastic team based here and we have
super support. Our mentors are true Amazon angels providing
guidance and showing great patience.” “I cried as I read the
Career Choice announcement on Amazon today. What Amazon is
doing to help its employees is affecting lives in the most
meaningful way I can think of. It restores my faith in
humanity.”
I'm not saying they haven't received thousands of thank-yous, but that's weird, right? I've never once considered sending a thank-you to any CEO/boss, nor have I met anyone who has. (Of course, I've also never worked at Amazon--)
It might be weird, but I'm a thank-you letter writer. I wouldn't write those exact letters, but I've written similar sentiments.
I've written my CEO, because I live in a house I bought with money earned from this job, raising a family of three kids, and appreciate that my enterprise is sustainable. I'm grateful for my job, the opportunity to do the work I do, and to the people who make it happen.
However, I write a half-dozen or so such letters per year. Not just professional: personal, community, and so on. This rate is trending up as I get older. I'm getting more and more grateful for how our lives all fit together. There are many people working hard toward good ends and probably not being thanked for the good work they do.
I absolutely don't think people writing thank you notes to their boss is weird. I do this on almost a daily basis via email or text.
This block of text does seem weird though - I think it's because she was highly emotional while writing. (Completely a guess.) And this particular portion would have likely been the most emotional for her. It's not as well composed as the rest of the fairly well-formed critique.
I don't think it's a weird thing to do if someone loves what they do or is very grateful for the opportunity they have. However, I'm biased as I have written a thank you note to my CEO before (small company - I was #13 and we have 36 people now).
Prior to the Internet and e-mail, the days of yore 20+ years ago, writing thank you notes was far more common. Can you believe it was actually expected job-hunting etiquette to send a thank-you note/letter after an interview, thanking the interviewer for their time and getting in a couple final "why you should hire me" points?
If the Internet has done anything successfully, it has drastically eroded much of our common courtesy and etiquette.
Having worked in corporate at Walmart, I don't find this weird at all. Especially coming from early employees (from whom I presume these came), many of whom probably made a decent chunk of change from the performance of the company's stock since the early days.
Sam Walton, the late founder of Walmart, is revered as something of a demigod by the early Walmart employees (many of whom are still around). This is especially true of early administrative, distribution, and store-level employees. These folks had limited prospects and came for stable employment -- but they were rewarded beyond their wildest expectations when the company grew from a regional general store into a $100B+ business in a little over a decade. Early Walmart employees speak of "Mr. Sam" (as they call him) the way we speak of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson.
I wouldn't be surprised if early Amazon employees have a similar reverence for Jeff Bezos.
I think writing to the CEO says more about a person writing the letter than the person the letter is being addressed to. Especially if the writer doesn't know the CEO well.
Just 10 minutes ago I wrote an email of appreciation to the boss of someone who I think is doing a good job, out of the blue. People do write thank you notes, directed at a person's boss, from time to time even if you don't.
I think Jeff Bezos and Amazon have changed the world of commerce (online and offline). Imagine what kind of world it would be without such efficient online e-commerce as an option.
Did you take a poll of everyone you've met about this topic?
Or are you assuming that the people you've met would have told you if they sent letters to the CEO?
Consider this possibility: maybe Jeff Bezos sends personal replies to the letters. If word got around, it wouldn't be that weird for 1-2% of the workforce to write a thank you note hoping for a personal reply.
People definitely do this at Amazon--especially as they're leaving the company, if they had a good experience working there, as many people did. I don't think I sent Jeff a note when I left Amazon, but I know others who did.
Thanks, I sort of assumed this was Jeff's elementary-school-aged child. I even had an androgynous, towheaded, smiling image in my mind. ("MacKenzie" is a rather androgynous, and dare I say infantilizing, name.)
I think she streisanded the book, this "controversy" is the first I had heard of it myself. But now I've seen her review mentioned in three different online news sources in the last 24 hours.
How long before the factual inaccuracies noted by Mrs Bezos bleed into Wikipedia's articles on Jeff Bezos and Amazon, with this book being cited as a notable reference?
For someone so close to Amazon, you'd think she would verify her name in her profile so that the review would show the Real Name tag next to her name (adding a little more credibility). Maybe it doesn't really matter since this is just her third review on Amazon, the other two written in year 2001.
I think it's notable that a review (that is currently the second most 'helpful') is the way to disagree with a book. It reaches people considering buying it, so it's less grandstanding than announcing the same facts to a newspaper, where there would be much less editorial control.
You are 100% wrong. Stone interviewed Bezos many times over the years, just not expressly for this book. (Bezos refused.) Bezos did give permission for many of his friends and colleagues to speak to Stone, so he did cooperate in a fashion.
Reporting on a subject without interviewing them is so common, and so necessary, that journalists have a term to describe it. It's called a "write-around."
Full disclosure: I worked with Brad Stone for two years.
If the subject does not want to do an interview, than it is not unprofessional to not have interviewed the person. In fact, I can't imagine why even a dishonest reporter would not interview their subject given the chance, as that reporter is still in control of the transcribed material and can use it dishonestly, even moreso than if they didn't have the interview, because they can claim their biography has extra weight, due to the exclusive interview, even if they then end up twisting to their purposes.
(which is why very famous people often do not talk to reporters in the first place)
The "writearound", the kind of biography in which you do extensive research to fill in the gaps and talk to everyone else you can find, is actually a pretty well-honored form of biography, and one that can be very illuminating.
(I'm not defending the author in the Bezos case as I don't know the particulars. Just disputing your argument that not having a direct interview destroys the legitimacy of a biography)
This one appears to be better, but I think that until one of these guys manages to spend more time with Bezos, we won't really get the definitive story of the company's early years.
I would really like to see such a book, as Amazon, out of all the big tech companies, is probably the one I know the least about.
Cool. I didn't know Bezos worked for DE Shaw. Their research into how we schedule molecular dynamics simulations to gain the maximum information from limited compute resources is going to revolutionize experimental design in the engineering world. http://www.deshawresearch.com/publications.html
Something bothers me about the conclusion of the review...
"In this theory I treat the historical work as what it most manifestly is: a verbal structure in the form of a narrative prose discourse. Histories (and philosophies of history as well) combine a certain amount of 'data,' theoretical concepts for 'explaining' these data, and a narrative structure for their presentation as an icon of sets of events presumed to have occurred in times past. In addition, I maintain, they contain a deep structural content which is generally poetic, and specifically linguistic, in nature, and which serves as the precritically accepted paradigm of what a distinctively 'historical' explanation should be." (Hayden White, Metahistory, p. IX)
What MacKenzie Bezos points out, albeit in a localised fashion, is what the Humanities have come to regard as the "linguistic turn" during the course of the 20th century. As Hayden White states above (in his concern with historical writing), historical writing takes a certain set of data that is then fitted into a wider narrative, alongside some underlying meta-narrative, which marks a certain interpretive paradigm (e.g. a progress-narrative). This, in turn, means that no account can desribe "historical truth". It also means that every account is fundamentally literary (or, as he formulates it, at least linguistic). It is no surprise, then, that the Bezos biography does not describe "historical fact". However, it also means that a biography written by Bezos's wive or even his autobiography cannot describe "historical truth" either. Every account remains a narrative, and thus fictional, even if based "on real events", as Hollywood so neatly calls it.
Hayden White continues: The chosen (or, in this case, criticised) writers' "status as possible models of historical representation or conceptualization does not depend upon the nature of the 'data' they used to support their generalizations or the theories they invoked to explain them; it depends rather upon the consistency, coherence, and illuminative power of their respective visions of the historical field." (Hayden White, Metahistory, p. 4)
So her final claim is dubious, at best: "Ideally, authors are careful to ensure people know whether what they are reading is history or an entertaining fictionalization. Hollywood often uses a more honest label: 'a story based on true events.' If authors won’t admit they’ve crossed this important line, their characters can do it for them."
While the "character" may certainly give you their version of the story, what they present is far from being "historical truth". They also choose examples, omit others, pick and make decisions, depending on their very own narrative. This is less a clash of "fiction" versus "historical truth", but instead a clash of two narratives. The character's narrative (in this case, Bezos's) might carry more authority (he is the character in question, after all), but the account remains nevertheless a narrative, which can also be criticised.
This is the same reflex as can be observed sometimes with old guest listeners at universities who torpedo (especially) historical lectures with a simple claim: "But I was there in 19xx, and I didn't know about or notice any of that." And while that might be a true data point, it doesn't mean that it somehow invalidates the wider narrative.
Edit: The author can thus certainly criticise the overall narrative or narrative thrust in the biography, but pointing out singular data points that simply oppose a given data point do not serve the same function.
This is a bunch of pretentious hock. The linguistic turn has nothing to do with this. In fact, I hate how you bring up an external source and quote extensively from it as if it proves anything. Okay, armchair liberal arts student, here's the smack:
When you purport to be writing a factual account, there are certain standards that you can be held accountable to.
Take, for instance, "A Million Little Pieces". It was a memoir written by James Frey in 2003 that absolutely imploded when people found out that he made up large chunks of the material (wikipedia now lists it as "semi-fictional"). There's a difference between the two categories, and the difference is in exactly the type of anecdotal evidence that you don't think is important.
Edited to add:
I agree that maybe the overall narrative of the book--the feeling and reportage of Amazon's culture--may still be accurate. I'd like to see more examples of inaccuracies before drawing any conclusions. It's also important to bear in mind just how much of a vested interest MacKenzie Bezos has in debunking this, because presumably the book makes Jeff Bezos and Amazon look bad (haven't read it yet though).
Well, either the Remains of the Day anecdote is true or false... it's one thing to pick and choose the facts you think are important in the context of the narrative you think is important, another if the facts are incorrect, which is what Mrs. Bezos is alleging.
Interestingly, one of the "characters" did come forward, with their own "historical truth" review (4/5 stars) that doesn't exactly fall in line with MacKenzie's conclusions:
Interesting, I hadn't heard of Hayden White before:
> He has argued that historical writing mirrors literary writing in many ways, sharing the strong reliance on narrative for meaning, therefore ruling out the possibility for objective or truly scientific history. White has also argued, however, that history is most successful when it embraces this "narrativity", since it is what allows history to be meaningful.
This is relevant considering most non-fiction writing today is influence by "new journalism" and adopts a fiction/literary form. Often using a narrative structure similar to screenwriting (beginning/middle/end) which is antithetical to scientific history.
Hayden White would distinguish between a hollywood narrative in which a false(r) history is deliberately created for entertainment or sensatinalism, and an attempt at an accurate account, regardless of how biased it is. There's a difference between intentionally crafting a narrative and expressing one you have formed through your experiences. Bezos is suggesting the former, which is quite different than what White was talking about. Not that that proves anything, but you're dismissing what she's saying completely by misapplying a theory.
Reading the review, I think I could create my own TL;DR:
Overall, there is confirmation bias. We see what we want to see.
This is as true for Ms. Bezos's review as it is for the author's biography. As is usually the case, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle area of consensus -- which we now know is anathemic territory for Mr. Bezos.
EDIT: would appreciate a reply to understand why this was downvoted.
[+] [-] dbecker|12 years ago|reply
I wonder whether this book is less accurate than average, or whether this review is finding only the typical level of inaccuracy.
[+] [-] JunkDNA|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barretts|12 years ago|reply
Everything else she says is subjective. She thinks Stone portrayed Amazon as a cutthroat, sinister culture; she tries to re-frame it as an Edenic workplace. The truth is probably somewhere in between, but her version is certainly not a fact.
[+] [-] steerpike|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thaumasiotes|12 years ago|reply
How long before you either () stop being shocked by the stories you understand, or () stop assuming the journalist is telling you the truth in stories you don't? A sentence like this makes more sense in the past tense...
When I was small, my parents taught me that if it appeared on TV, it wasn't true （they were mostly thinking of commercials, but news programs were offenders too). It may be sad, but those seem more and more like words to live by, and extend to other media.
[+] [-] judk|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saalweachter|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clinth|12 years ago|reply
I've written my CEO, because I live in a house I bought with money earned from this job, raising a family of three kids, and appreciate that my enterprise is sustainable. I'm grateful for my job, the opportunity to do the work I do, and to the people who make it happen.
However, I write a half-dozen or so such letters per year. Not just professional: personal, community, and so on. This rate is trending up as I get older. I'm getting more and more grateful for how our lives all fit together. There are many people working hard toward good ends and probably not being thanked for the good work they do.
[+] [-] jcutrell|12 years ago|reply
This block of text does seem weird though - I think it's because she was highly emotional while writing. (Completely a guess.) And this particular portion would have likely been the most emotional for her. It's not as well composed as the rest of the fairly well-formed critique.
[+] [-] jonhinson|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ececconi|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kfcm|12 years ago|reply
If the Internet has done anything successfully, it has drastically eroded much of our common courtesy and etiquette.
[+] [-] jonnathanson|12 years ago|reply
Sam Walton, the late founder of Walmart, is revered as something of a demigod by the early Walmart employees (many of whom are still around). This is especially true of early administrative, distribution, and store-level employees. These folks had limited prospects and came for stable employment -- but they were rewarded beyond their wildest expectations when the company grew from a regional general store into a $100B+ business in a little over a decade. Early Walmart employees speak of "Mr. Sam" (as they call him) the way we speak of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson.
I wouldn't be surprised if early Amazon employees have a similar reverence for Jeff Bezos.
[+] [-] ececconi|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unreal37|12 years ago|reply
I think Jeff Bezos and Amazon have changed the world of commerce (online and offline). Imagine what kind of world it would be without such efficient online e-commerce as an option.
[+] [-] frogpelt|12 years ago|reply
Consider this possibility: maybe Jeff Bezos sends personal replies to the letters. If word got around, it wouldn't be that weird for 1-2% of the workforce to write a thank you note hoping for a personal reply.
[+] [-] jasoncrawford|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsr_|12 years ago|reply
In any case, thank-you notes from warehouse workers aren't much good as evidence that Amazon isn't treating them badly.
[+] [-] codeonfire|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] talles|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jessaustin|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coolsank|12 years ago|reply
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-11-05/responding-t...
[+] [-] makmanalp|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barretts|12 years ago|reply
"I'm certainly less biased than Jeff's wife."
http://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-wife-reviews-book-...
[+] [-] Amadou|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dorznak|12 years ago|reply
Since the subject of the book is still alive, I guess it's an unauthorized biography?
[+] [-] j_s|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teh_klev|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newscracker|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jfoster|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonknee|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tobylane|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kineticfocus|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barretts|12 years ago|reply
Reporting on a subject without interviewing them is so common, and so necessary, that journalists have a term to describe it. It's called a "write-around."
Full disclosure: I worked with Brad Stone for two years.
[+] [-] ddoolin|12 years ago|reply
Is there a reason for not doing so? I agree it seems really unprofessional.
[+] [-] danso|12 years ago|reply
http://jimromenesko.com/2013/08/11/i-interviewed-jeff-bezos-...
If the subject does not want to do an interview, than it is not unprofessional to not have interviewed the person. In fact, I can't imagine why even a dishonest reporter would not interview their subject given the chance, as that reporter is still in control of the transcribed material and can use it dishonestly, even moreso than if they didn't have the interview, because they can claim their biography has extra weight, due to the exclusive interview, even if they then end up twisting to their purposes.
(which is why very famous people often do not talk to reporters in the first place)
The "writearound", the kind of biography in which you do extensive research to fill in the gaps and talk to everyone else you can find, is actually a pretty well-honored form of biography, and one that can be very illuminating.
(I'm not defending the author in the Bezos case as I don't know the particulars. Just disputing your argument that not having a direct interview destroys the legitimacy of a biography)
[+] [-] davidw|12 years ago|reply
http://www.amazon.com/review/R2RXH1XQAP8AAA/ref=cm_cr_rdp_pe...
This one appears to be better, but I think that until one of these guys manages to spend more time with Bezos, we won't really get the definitive story of the company's early years.
I would really like to see such a book, as Amazon, out of all the big tech companies, is probably the one I know the least about.
[+] [-] kubiiii|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crb002|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JetSpiegel|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marincounty|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rmk2|12 years ago|reply
"In this theory I treat the historical work as what it most manifestly is: a verbal structure in the form of a narrative prose discourse. Histories (and philosophies of history as well) combine a certain amount of 'data,' theoretical concepts for 'explaining' these data, and a narrative structure for their presentation as an icon of sets of events presumed to have occurred in times past. In addition, I maintain, they contain a deep structural content which is generally poetic, and specifically linguistic, in nature, and which serves as the precritically accepted paradigm of what a distinctively 'historical' explanation should be." (Hayden White, Metahistory, p. IX)
What MacKenzie Bezos points out, albeit in a localised fashion, is what the Humanities have come to regard as the "linguistic turn" during the course of the 20th century. As Hayden White states above (in his concern with historical writing), historical writing takes a certain set of data that is then fitted into a wider narrative, alongside some underlying meta-narrative, which marks a certain interpretive paradigm (e.g. a progress-narrative). This, in turn, means that no account can desribe "historical truth". It also means that every account is fundamentally literary (or, as he formulates it, at least linguistic). It is no surprise, then, that the Bezos biography does not describe "historical fact". However, it also means that a biography written by Bezos's wive or even his autobiography cannot describe "historical truth" either. Every account remains a narrative, and thus fictional, even if based "on real events", as Hollywood so neatly calls it.
Hayden White continues: The chosen (or, in this case, criticised) writers' "status as possible models of historical representation or conceptualization does not depend upon the nature of the 'data' they used to support their generalizations or the theories they invoked to explain them; it depends rather upon the consistency, coherence, and illuminative power of their respective visions of the historical field." (Hayden White, Metahistory, p. 4)
So her final claim is dubious, at best: "Ideally, authors are careful to ensure people know whether what they are reading is history or an entertaining fictionalization. Hollywood often uses a more honest label: 'a story based on true events.' If authors won’t admit they’ve crossed this important line, their characters can do it for them."
While the "character" may certainly give you their version of the story, what they present is far from being "historical truth". They also choose examples, omit others, pick and make decisions, depending on their very own narrative. This is less a clash of "fiction" versus "historical truth", but instead a clash of two narratives. The character's narrative (in this case, Bezos's) might carry more authority (he is the character in question, after all), but the account remains nevertheless a narrative, which can also be criticised.
This is the same reflex as can be observed sometimes with old guest listeners at universities who torpedo (especially) historical lectures with a simple claim: "But I was there in 19xx, and I didn't know about or notice any of that." And while that might be a true data point, it doesn't mean that it somehow invalidates the wider narrative.
Edit: The author can thus certainly criticise the overall narrative or narrative thrust in the biography, but pointing out singular data points that simply oppose a given data point do not serve the same function.
[+] [-] unclesaamm|12 years ago|reply
When you purport to be writing a factual account, there are certain standards that you can be held accountable to.
Take, for instance, "A Million Little Pieces". It was a memoir written by James Frey in 2003 that absolutely imploded when people found out that he made up large chunks of the material (wikipedia now lists it as "semi-fictional"). There's a difference between the two categories, and the difference is in exactly the type of anecdotal evidence that you don't think is important.
Edited to add: I agree that maybe the overall narrative of the book--the feeling and reportage of Amazon's culture--may still be accurate. I'd like to see more examples of inaccuracies before drawing any conclusions. It's also important to bear in mind just how much of a vested interest MacKenzie Bezos has in debunking this, because presumably the book makes Jeff Bezos and Amazon look bad (haven't read it yet though).
[+] [-] RockyMcNuts|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] josefresco|12 years ago|reply
http://www.amazon.com/review/R3J863C5ZP53BA/ref=cm_cr_dp_tit...
[+] [-] dmix|12 years ago|reply
> He has argued that historical writing mirrors literary writing in many ways, sharing the strong reliance on narrative for meaning, therefore ruling out the possibility for objective or truly scientific history. White has also argued, however, that history is most successful when it embraces this "narrativity", since it is what allows history to be meaningful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayden_White
This is relevant considering most non-fiction writing today is influence by "new journalism" and adopts a fiction/literary form. Often using a narrative structure similar to screenwriting (beginning/middle/end) which is antithetical to scientific history.
[+] [-] Megatronic|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barretts|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bksenior|12 years ago|reply
- Robert Evans
[+] [-] jroseattle|12 years ago|reply
Overall, there is confirmation bias. We see what we want to see.
This is as true for Ms. Bezos's review as it is for the author's biography. As is usually the case, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle area of consensus -- which we now know is anathemic territory for Mr. Bezos.
EDIT: would appreciate a reply to understand why this was downvoted.