Mattioli tears away the Amazon curtain and finds a culture of ruthlessness, greed, and disdain for the law.
A compelling study of the tech behemoth’s bid to control whatever it touches.
Amazon has infiltrated our lives, and the U.S. economy, to a degree that no other company ever has. Mattioli, a Wall Street Journal reporter who has covered Amazon since 2019, brings great expertise to her first book. She readily acknowledges that the company provides convenience, product range, and low prices to shoppers, but she believes that it is now doing more harm than good. There are already several books and a wealth of articles explaining how Amazon overpowers small companies through unfair practices, manipulates the tax system, and abuses its employees, but Mattioli examines some new aspects through interviews with former and current employees. Many of her sources requested anonymity, which is understandable given Amazon’s penchant for retribution. The real value of this book, however, is in the chapters about regulating the corporation. Legislation stalled in Congress, but a lawsuit has been brought by the Federal Trade Commission, which aims to break the giant into separate entities, working on the principle that much of Amazon’s power stems from its domination of numerous connected sectors. For its part, Amazon argues that it constantly works to benefit consumers, but the focus of the FTC case is its anti-competitive market operations. The case is still underway, and while Mattioli is a supporter of the lawsuit, she points to the massive lobbying power of Amazon, as well as its legion of lawyers and PR specialists. Another lawsuit involves the Prime program, claiming that “Amazon purposefully signed up consumers…without their understanding and made it very hard to cancel.” Even if there is no firm conclusion, Mattioli has done much to reveal the snarl behind the smiley-face logo.
Mattioli tears away the Amazon curtain and finds a culture of ruthlessness, greed, and disdain for the law.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780316269773
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.
A thoughtful program for eradicating poverty from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted.
“America’s poverty is not for lack of resources,” writes Desmond. “We lack something else.” That something else is compassion, in part, but it’s also the lack of a social system that insists that everyone pull their weight—and that includes the corporations and wealthy individuals who, the IRS estimates, get away without paying upward of $1 trillion per year. Desmond, who grew up in modest circumstances and suffered poverty in young adulthood, points to the deleterious effects of being poor—among countless others, the precarity of health care and housing (with no meaningful controls on rent), lack of transportation, the constant threat of losing one’s job due to illness, and the need to care for dependent children. It does not help, Desmond adds, that so few working people are represented by unions or that Black Americans, even those who have followed the “three rules” (graduate from high school, get a full-time job, wait until marriage to have children), are far likelier to be poor than their White compatriots. Furthermore, so many full-time jobs are being recast as contracted, fire-at-will gigs, “not a break from the norm as much as an extension of it, a continuation of corporations finding new ways to limit their obligations to workers.” By Desmond’s reckoning, besides amending these conditions, it would not take a miracle to eliminate poverty: about $177 billion, which would help end hunger and homelessness and “make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty, like violence, sickness, and despair.” These are matters requiring systemic reform, which will in turn require Americans to elect officials who will enact that reform. And all of us, the author urges, must become “poverty abolitionists…refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.” Fortune 500 CEOs won’t like Desmond’s message for rewriting the social contract—which is precisely the point.
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593239919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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