The entertaining story of the first five years of Amazon.com is recounted by employee number 55. "The most impressive aspect . . . is Marcus's sculpting of self into an everyman caught between two magnets--culture and commerce."--David Shields ("Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity") 224 pp.

James Marcus was employed as Senior Editor at Amazon from 1996 to 2001. The executive editor of Harper's and an award-winning translator, he has written for the Atlantic Monthly, the Village Voice, the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post Book World, the New York Review of Books, Lingua Franca, and many other publications. He lives in New York City.