"Americans with an eye cocked toward the markets were asked to believe that Amazon, a two-year-old bookseller, was worth more than the combined values of Sears and U.S. Steel." — from Amazonia

James Marcus was hired as a senior editor at Amazon.com in 1996, giving him a ringside seat for the company?s explosive rise and dismal wallet-busting swoon. Now — as the e-commerce giant makes an astonishing comeback — he tells all. Unlike the recent crop of dot.com memoirs, this is no tale of a bankrupt and brokenhearted entrepreneur. Marcus came aboard as a self-described "token humanist," and his take on the new economy juggernaut is predominantly a cultural one. Why, he asks, did Jeff Bezos's brainchild become the key symbol of Internet euphoria? How did the company change as it morphed from a miniscule start-up to a global, multibillion-dollar leviathan? Was the Web breaking more promises than it kept? And finally: What could an editor do to resist being transformed into a hyperventilating shill?

In answering these questions, Marcus takes us to meetings, job interviews, trade shows, and corporate retreats. We spend a freezing holiday season at the warehouse, and a considerably warmer afternoon at the company's summer picnic — where Bezos himself mans the dunk tank. Amazonia is a work of rare wit and razor-sharp observation, and a superlative guide to America's lost world of the nineties.

"Amazonia is an exquisitely written literary delight that is both personal and ambitious....Marcus takes a story that most of us already know — the giddy euphoria of the late '90s stock market — and turns it into a riveting, personal document....[T]o have someone who loves books write a book about Amazon, 'the world's largest bookstore,' is a real treat." Andrew Leonard, Salon.com

"Marcus...provides a captivating, witty account of how the fledgling e-retailer transformed itself from a startup that generated $16 million in sales in 1996 to a behemoth with revenue of $5.3 billion in 2003." Publishers Weekly

"Amiable memoir of Amazon.com's dizzying rise and eventual earthbound return....Rarely surprising, but amusing and intelligently written: a good exploration of how Amazon survived the crash and earned its longevity." Kirkus Reviews

"While the quotidian world of everyday work might have seemed uninteresting, Marcus makes it fun to peek inside company workings to see how Amazon.com invented itself." Library Journal

"The most impressive aspect of Amazonia is Marcus's sculpting of self into an everyman caught between two magnets — culture and commerce." David Shields, author of Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity

"Has the shapeliness and intensity of a novel....An utterly beguiling book." Jonathan Raban, author of Waxwings

"Not only great fun, but a sobering reminder of how quickly both our pipe-dreams and our technology can overtake us." Lisa Zeidner, author of Layover

The entertaining story of the first five years of Amazon.com is recounted by employee number 55.

Happy Holidays at Amazon.com, 1997:

• Average number of books sold each day in December: 60,000
• Average number of books grudgingly gift-wrapped by the author: 240
• Average number of hours spent at warehouse each day: 10
• Average number of hours spent skulking in coffee room: 1.5
• Number of times James Marcus was permitted to drive a warehouse forklift: 0

From 1996 to 2001 James Marcus was employed as Senior Editor at Amazon.com. His journalism has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, the Village Voice, the New York Times Book Review, the Nation, Newsday, the Washington Post Book World, Salon, and The New York Review of Books. He lives in New York City.