David’s review of Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America > Likes and Comments
76 likes · Like
Thank for the review. Looks like you saved me from something that SHOULD have been interesting. I really enjoyed The Everything Store. It's a book about the rise of Amazon from inception and a bit of Bezos biography.
I really really wanted to love this book, but I came away with the same feeling as you. I would have liked it more if it had either been laser-focused on Amazon or if it were a book about the economic history of the past half-century. Trying to do both in 400 pages just didn't work.
You really captured my gripe about the is book. It truly lost me completely when it implied that Amazon was at fault for the death of a worker in a tornado. The valid concerns about Amazon were lost in a sea of scattershot narrative.
Thank you! I am a few chapters in and this told me what I needed to hear to give it up!
I disagree, Dave--though respect for the literally thousands of reviews!
The connection of the macroeconomic and the biographical in this well-written and important book is explicit.
These stories are the inevitable result of the facts you say are dropped--they are, I believe, how those facts are made real to readers
Also I saw Beth Steel and other stories of blue collar jobs as a great way to demonstrate how much further down we've come--in dignified work, in living wages, in the ability to negotiate, in choice, in neighborhoods. We're genuinely nostalgic for the above! The slickness of Amazon can obscure this.
I really enjoyed this book and am pushing it on critical readers.
And as a side note, I'm suspicious of the outsized number of "likes" this outlying, two-star review has gotten, which has essentially pinned it to the top in Goodreads' (Amazon's) views :-(
I completely agree with Ian Oeschger. The book has a lot to say about Amazon but it's bigger than Amazon (if that's possible). Corporate/Entrepreneurial greed is as old as civilization itself, Bethlehem Steel didn't set out to pay good wages or allow union organization. But in the end, wages improved and the workers felt a sense of community working in this rigorous, sometime dangerous industry. But as local communities shrink and dwindle and cyber communities (if you can call them that) grow we lose a lot. And Amazon is accelerating that change.
Agree with OP. The best that can be said of Fulfillment is that it points the reader to actual books on Amazon (I.E. Brandt).
I came here to add a comment that basically agrees with the dissenters. I appreciate the OP's point of view, but I prefer journalism that lays out solid information in enough detail to tell the whole story and lets people draw their own conclusions. In telling my daughter about this book, I noted how the author (affectionately) describes the life of an Amazon worker who was a Bethlehem retiree, and how he had three major industrial accidents but still loved his steel job. Her immediate reaction was, "That tells you something about how bad it is to work for Amazon". The author's point is pretty clear, and anyone who has worked "grunt" jobs understands it. A difficult job where you contribute someone other people can't, that is needed, in community, that's a job. Picker jobs are very different. What we do about that is another question, of course.
back to top
date
newest »
newest »
message 1:
by
Sean
(new)
Feb 15, 2021 08:17AM
Thank for the review. Looks like you saved me from something that SHOULD have been interesting. I really enjoyed The Everything Store. It's a book about the rise of Amazon from inception and a bit of Bezos biography.
reply
|
flag
I really really wanted to love this book, but I came away with the same feeling as you. I would have liked it more if it had either been laser-focused on Amazon or if it were a book about the economic history of the past half-century. Trying to do both in 400 pages just didn't work.
You really captured my gripe about the is book. It truly lost me completely when it implied that Amazon was at fault for the death of a worker in a tornado. The valid concerns about Amazon were lost in a sea of scattershot narrative.
Thank you! I am a few chapters in and this told me what I needed to hear to give it up!
I disagree, Dave--though respect for the literally thousands of reviews! The connection of the macroeconomic and the biographical in this well-written and important book is explicit.
These stories are the inevitable result of the facts you say are dropped--they are, I believe, how those facts are made real to readers
Also I saw Beth Steel and other stories of blue collar jobs as a great way to demonstrate how much further down we've come--in dignified work, in living wages, in the ability to negotiate, in choice, in neighborhoods. We're genuinely nostalgic for the above! The slickness of Amazon can obscure this.
I really enjoyed this book and am pushing it on critical readers.
And as a side note, I'm suspicious of the outsized number of "likes" this outlying, two-star review has gotten, which has essentially pinned it to the top in Goodreads' (Amazon's) views :-(
I completely agree with Ian Oeschger. The book has a lot to say about Amazon but it's bigger than Amazon (if that's possible). Corporate/Entrepreneurial greed is as old as civilization itself, Bethlehem Steel didn't set out to pay good wages or allow union organization. But in the end, wages improved and the workers felt a sense of community working in this rigorous, sometime dangerous industry. But as local communities shrink and dwindle and cyber communities (if you can call them that) grow we lose a lot. And Amazon is accelerating that change.
Agree with OP. The best that can be said of Fulfillment is that it points the reader to actual books on Amazon (I.E. Brandt).
I came here to add a comment that basically agrees with the dissenters. I appreciate the OP's point of view, but I prefer journalism that lays out solid information in enough detail to tell the whole story and lets people draw their own conclusions. In telling my daughter about this book, I noted how the author (affectionately) describes the life of an Amazon worker who was a Bethlehem retiree, and how he had three major industrial accidents but still loved his steel job. Her immediate reaction was, "That tells you something about how bad it is to work for Amazon". The author's point is pretty clear, and anyone who has worked "grunt" jobs understands it. A difficult job where you contribute someone other people can't, that is needed, in community, that's a job. Picker jobs are very different. What we do about that is another question, of course.