One Click

You'd be hard pressed to think of a book that represents the must-read history of Amazon.com. In fact, I would go so far as to argue that significantly less is written about Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos than other darlings of the technology industry.

It would seem that Richard Brandt seeks to make amends for this with his book One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com.

Where One Click succeeds is in providing a holistic account of how Amazon came to be. It's interesting to learn, for instance, that Amazon was originally supposed to be named "Cadabra", or that by patenting the eponymous one-click system for making purchases on the site the company effectively estopped other online retailers from introducing the same convenience. But the book is perhaps even more successful at providing some perspective into the life and personality of Bezos himself, an achiever who first found professional success developing computer systems for investment houses on Wall Street. Personally, it was learning about such details that I appreciated most about the book.

Yet, for everything that the book has to offer, it's hard to escape the fact that it's missing something, as if it has all the ingredients of a good read but never quite gets there.

Notwithstanding the fact that I enjoyed reading about Bezos and Amazon.com, I couldn't help but find One Click lacking in personality. To me, it felt almost as if Brandt could've been writing about any subject, and in this instance it just happened to be Amazon.com. Moreover, it seemed as if the book was rehashed from other material already written about Bezos and Amazon.com. Sometimes authors can get away with such an approach -- Jeff Ryan's Super Mario was a rather good book about Nintendo, even if it didn't really go beyond what was already known about the company -- but in this case, the book came across as bland and anemic.

Ultimately, I think One Click comes across as the beginning of a great book about Jeff Bezos and Amazon.com, and one that, unfortunately, didn't realize it's full potential.

[This review is based on a pre-publication proof obtained through NetGalley.]