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- Amazonia
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Amazonia
James Rollins
Manufacturer: Harper
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Excavation
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ASIN: 0060002492
Release Date: 2003-06-24 |
Book Description
The Rand scientific expedition entered the lush wilderness of the Amazon and never returned. Years later, one of its members has stumbled out of the world's most inhospitable rainforest—a former Special Forces soldier, scarred, mutilated, terrified, and mere hours from death, who went in with one arm missing . . . and came out with both intact.
Unable to comprehend this inexplicable event, the government sends Nathan Rand into this impenetrable secret world of undreamed-of perils, to follow the trail of his vanished father . . . toward mysteries that must be solved at any cost. But the nightmare that is awaiting Nate and his team of scientists and seasoned U.S. Rangers dwarfs any danger they anticipated . . . an ancient, unspoken terror—a power beyond human imagining—that can forever alter the world beyond the dark, lethal confines of . . .
Download Description
When a CIA operative stumbles out of the lush jungle to his death, the government turns to Nathan Rand, an Amazon native since his father's disappearance, to solve the mystery of a world where devouring insects rule and foreign diseases flourish. But Nathans only sure of one thing: his team is being stalked...and madness, terror and horrific death aren't far behind. The Rand scientific expedition entered the lush wilderness of the Amazon and never returned. Years later, one of its members has stumbled out of the world's most inhospitable rainforest - a former Special Forces soldier, scarred, mutilated, terrified, and mere hours from death, who went in with one arm missing...and came out with both intact. Unable to comprehend this inexplicable event, the government sends Nathan Rand into this impenetrable secret world of undreamed-of perils, to follow the trail of his vanished father...toward mysteries that must be solved at any cost. But the nightmare that is awaiting Nate and his team of scientists and seasoned U.S. Rangers dwarfs any danger they anticipated; an ancient, unspoken terror -- a power beyond human imagining - that can forever alter the world beyond the dark, lethal confines of . . .
Customer Reviews:
Suspend all intelligence and rationality to enjoy.......2007-10-05
The plot is totally unbelievable and this contributed to making the book very annoying to me. It sounded like a group of third graders sat around and tried to think of what would be really cool in the jungle, like prehistoric mutant beasts, marines, and crazy wierd tribesman. The drama is built by a series of impossible and irrational events causing the reader not to care. The characters are one-dimensional stereotypes lacking personality, good guys are completely perfect and bad guys completely evil. The marines are tough egotistical emotionless drones whom can't defend themselves. The hero is stupidly, irrationaly, blindingly, "brave" and he is always the one that has to jump in and save the other helpless members at any cost. The writing is dull, especially for so much action, and predictable since many of the main characters can't die with 300 pages left. The climax comes too early and is fed by another train of unbelievable facts. What else can I say that I did not like? Oh yea the romance is contrived and the dialogue is laughable. In the unending near death situations Nate constantly has some corny Terminatoresque line just before he should be killed.
Rollins plot is tied together by mud bridges wrapped in duct tape, that is, it falls apart constantly so he just makes big leaps to get from one point to the next.
The book is slightly entertaining, hence the two stars.
****Possible Spoilers (if this book could be spoiled):
The especially annoying tidbits that made me roll my eyes and say "not again":
-Dr. Kowe has a Santa Claus bag of jungle cures and magic plant matter
-Pirhanna-Frog (need I say more) would take over the world since a simple bite kills a full-size man in minutes and they are only nocturnal even though they live in dark swampy Amazon water, dumb
-killer locusts by the million are attracted by some burning sludge, dumb
-Nate or Kowe are basically the only ones who can see or do anything right or important, Nate particularly notices every single threat first, unreal
-The civilians are immune to any damage until the end but trained marines fall like flies
-the mysterious, non-human, freakish, super-warrior Ban-ali are taken over basically without a fight
-just to wrap up the story the exhausted prisoners somehow catch up to the bad guys who have a two hour head start in the same night and crush them no problem (same guys who could not defend against them)
-a cat cuts through two legs in one swipe like her claws are Samurai swords but then to kill the whole pack just poison some meat
-Blue Whale sized Caimans living in a lake that bullets can't penetrate, including their soft underbelly, dumb
-Blue Whale sized Caimans can leap straight up 20 plus feet, really dumb
-Dr. Carl Rand is alive, fed by a tree root for half a year, really really dumb
Excellent!.......2007-09-18
I'm going to give you the review of this book in a nutshell, plagarized from a comment I read elsewhere about another author:
"James Rollins is not a polished writer, but he is a very good storyteller."
I've just read Amazonia for the 2nd time, and the book retains a lot of it's excitement. Yes, the characters aren't too deep, and the obligatory bad guys are comic-bookish, but that's OK, this isn't drama.
What is of importance to me as a reader is that Rollins is a heck of a storyteller and has a heck of an imagination. The premise of a man returning from the jungle under mysterious circumstances is as good as I've ever read. Rollins then takes you along on an adventure into the Amazon to solve the mystery, where you're just completely beset by the most mysterious and terrifying of happenings. You literally don't know if you're gonna survive the trip as you go deeper in the jungle and deeper into the mystery. The trip into the jungle is as long as it's terrifying and as terrifying as it's satisfying. He's managed to fit a lot into the book and you'll definitely get your money's worth.
I think of this genre and Rollin's initial outputs (not his latest books) as direct descendants of early works by writers like Sir H. Rider Haggard, only more evolved. I think HRH might be pleased, or miffed, I don't know.
Amazonia.......2007-09-17
I read so many books that sometimes its hard to find a book that keeps me interested. But this book really did it! Its exciting and kept me reading till it was done.. Good read
It could have been better..........2007-09-08
I loved the plot - it kept you on the edge of your seat. As with his other books, though, it did have too many gory deaths. I understand that some gory deaths help contribute to the story, but a good number of these ones were just unnecessary.
Good but the same old plot.......2007-07-30
I would like to give this a 3.5 because I read Subterranean and Excavation before this and the plot remains the same, same as the previous two. I think among the 3 Excavation was the best because of the visuals in it. Amazonia is a little less fast-paced than the previous 2 novels. Also the visuals are not as good as the previous two.
The same old bizzare creatures, lost civilization, killing-unused-characters, and so on. The good thing abt the book is the bit of technology it has in the end. You can more or less guess the ending if you have read the other two books. I haven't read deep fathom and ice hunt, but i am reading sandstorm and it appears different, i have my fingers crossed.
Book Description
The Amazon is not what it seems. As Hugh Raffles shows us in this captivating and innovative book, the world's last great wilderness has been transformed again and again by human activity. In Amazonia brings to life an Amazon whose allure and reality lie as much, or more, in what people have made of it as in what nature has wrought. It casts new light on centuries of encounter while describing the dramatic remaking of a sweeping landscape by residents of one small community in the Brazilian Amazon. Combining richly textured ethnographic research and lively historical analysis, Raffles weaves a fascinating story that changes our understanding of this region and challenges us to rethink what we mean by "nature."
Raffles draws from a wide range of material to demonstrate--in contrast to the tendency to downplay human agency in the Amazon--that the region is an outcome of the intimately intertwined histories of humans and nonhumans. He moves between a detailed narrative that analyzes the production of scientific knowledge about Amazonia over the centuries and an absorbing account of the extraordinary transformations to the fluvial landscape carried out over the past forty years by the inhabitants of Igarapé Guariba, four hours downstream from the nearest city.
Engagingly written, theoretically inventive, and vividly illustrated, the book introduces a diverse range of characters--from sixteenth-century explorers and their native rivals to nineteenth-century naturalists and contemporary ecologists, logging company executives, and river-traders. A natural history of a different kind, In Amazonia shows how humans, animals, rivers, and forests all participate in the making of a region that remains today at the center of debates in environmental politics.
Customer Reviews:
A great read.......2004-06-24
This beautifully written book won the 2003 Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing, a big deal in US anthropology. When you read it you can see why, as it really succeeds in bringing this fascinating region to life. It is lyrically written, and often both funny and sad. It is very personal in its account of the author's experience in the Amazon and of the people that he knows there, and it is also very informative about the region's history and culture. A quote on the book rightly says that "it has a great deal to offer those knowing everything or nothing about the Amazon." I agree: Highly recommended!
Interesting but a tough read........2004-06-01
From the first chapter: "I am preoccupied by a range of questions in the politics of nature that draw me to explore the fullness and multiplicity of nature as a domain marked both by an active and irreducible materiality and by a similarly irreducible discusivity-a domain with complex agency. In addition, this is a book of intimacies, an account of the differential relationships of affective and often physical proximity between humans, and between humans and non-humans. Such 'tense and tender ties' are themselves the sites and occasions for the condensations I examine here. Indeed, they are the constitutive matter of these locations" (p. 8).
The author, Hugh Raffles, apparently has three main goals in this book. The first is to discuss the significance of man-made canals in the Brazilian Amazon. Many of these canals were cut and dug by hand, and they opened up areas for settlement and trade that otherwise wouldn't have been so open. What appeared to 19th century explorers and naturalists to be "nature" was actually nature modified by man well before the era of steam powered ships and digging machines. A second goal, related to the first, is to give a fairly detailed example of the history of a particular man-made canal area, Igarape Guariba, that illustrates the idea of "natural history" in the sense of the history of a local natural area that has been changed over time through complex interactions between humans and nature and between humans and other humans. Such details provide an intimacy of acquaintance with Amazonia that is missed in larger-scale histories. A third goal is to discuss historical changes in European views of the relationship between man and nature, and the issue of environmental determinism of culture.
The book was of interest to me since I have visited the upper Amazon in Peru, and paddled through man-made canals similar to those that Raffles describes. And I am generally interested in Amazonian nature and native cultures. As it turned out, I was not as enthusiastic about this book as I had hoped to be. On the plus side, Raffles' narrative description-based on interviews of natives-of the history of a particular Amazonian tributary and its canals, and the families that made them, was written clearly enough, and was interesting. His discussion of trading patterns and land use in Amazonia was also interesting. On the negative side, Raffles' theoretical discussions were often tedious and hard to understand. He uses lots of rare words and complex sentences. I am not unaccustomed to reading academic writing. In fact, I have done quite a bit of it myself. But if a graduate student had turned in this manuscript to me as a doctoral dissertation, I would have required many parts of it to be re-written in plain English before I would have approved it. If you are interested in Amazonia and you have a very large vocabulary and like to use it to decipher sentences that most people would not understand at all, then you might like this book. In my view, if I have to read a sentence more than twice to understand it, then the sentence was badly written. There were many such cases in this book. This book has a number of interesting ideas. It is too bad that one has to work so hard to get them.
If you want to read a really interesting book about the Amazon as it was 150 years ago, I highly recommend A Naturalist on the River Amazons, by Henry Walter Bates. Bates was an English naturalist who spent 11 years exploring and collecting plant and insect and animal samples on the Amazon in the mid-1800s. His book is interesting for his interactions with the local people--both the natives and the Portuguese colonialists--as well as for its discussion and drawings of tropical nature. Bates' book is a major historical document of the Amazon, and it is quite interesting and well-written. After you have read Bates, you might want to read Raffles' Chapter 5 on Bates, titled "The Uses of Butterflies." Raffles discusses the historical context and significance of Bates and his work, which will add to your appreciation of Bates' book. However, be warned, to get through Raffles' chapter on Bates you will have to get through passages like this one:
"Scientific practice turns out to be a conjunctural negotiation of emergent and relational knowledges. Amazonians' understandings of the forest mediated by their assessments of the institutional resources and priorities of the visitor enter into fluid dialogue with Bates' own conflicted allegiance to natural historical systematics as mediated by all the complications stirred up in his Amazon experience" (p. 142).
I recommend this book for college professors and graduate students who specialize in the history of Amazonia.
Natural history for the 21st century.......2004-01-06
Amazonia is arguably the heartland of modern Western environmentalism-the region where many fundamental ecological insights were first proposed and honed, the site of some of the most violent and wrenching contemporary conflicts over natural resource exploitation and conservation, and the beloved core of a planetary nature conceived all too often as a battered and sputtering "spaceship Earth." In Amazonia casts a fresh and provocative light on this vital and contested terrain.
Nature in this account is not a primeval zone either threatened or threatening, but rather a dynamic and heterogeneous web of places and relations, saturated with the affinities and intimacies, the memories and yearnings, of everyday life. Tracking back and forth between multiple sites and scales, In Amazonia takes up a series of human engagements through which the very nature of the Amazon has been elaborated-exploratory expeditions, natural history collections, ecological experimentations, and embodied practices of occupation and development.
Raffles writes both with and against the literary traditions of Western naturalism, suggestively presenting the Amazon itself as an assemblage or collection of living objects. The result is a novel and enlightening mode of "natural history," one that places at center stage both the accidents and the affects that have made modern Amazonia.
Ultimately it is the quality of Raffles' writing that makes this volume such a captivating and enlightening read. With great skill and delicacy, Raffles spins out a narrative that turns at every turn on contingency-on the myriad and unpredictable accidents of biography, politics and philosophy that lend to places their significance and texture.
It is in such workings that nature itself finds a measure of agency, ecological chains of consequence turning fields to swamps, dropping houses and fruit trees into river beds, forcing fish to move from one place to another. Raffles is candid about the contingencies that led him through the path of his own writing, from the seductions of his characters to the personal traumas that directed him to the question of Amazonian passions in the first place.
As an heir to the vexing legacies of Western environmentalism myself, I found that In Amazonia struck many an unanticipated chord. How many of us have shared Amazonian dreams unknowing?
This is an amazing book!.......2004-01-04
This is an amazing book - at once engaging, entertaining and challenging. I can understand why it won two awards for ethnographic writing at the AAA. It is a testament to the possibility of combining beautifully written prose, interesting stories and sophisticated theoretical insights under the same cover, making it a great read for those with a general interest in Natural History, the environment and Amazonia, as well as for the most theoretically-minded academics interested in a sophisticated exploration of the complex relationships between nature, culture and power. Indeed, I used this book in a graduate seminar that I taught at Stanford and my students selected it as the best of 12 ethnographies they read during the course. The book has also been thoroughly enjoyed by non-academics, including my sister, who is a physician. In short In Amazonia is a tremendously worthwhile read.
Beautiful writing; compelling anthropology.......2004-01-02
"In Amazonia" tells an engaging and well-researched story of epic proportions. Raffles' lyrical style draws the reader close to the narrative but stops short of romanticizing. Appropriate for academic research or an interested layperson. Highly recommended!
Book Description
The western Amazon is the last frontier, as wild a west as Earth has ever known. For thirty years David G. Campbell has been exploring this lush wilderness, which contains more species than ever existed anywhere at any time in the four-billion-year history of life on our planet. With great artistic flair, Campbell takes us with him as he travels to the town of Cruzeiro do Sul, 2,800 miles from the mouth of the Amazon. Here he collects three old friends: Arito, a caiman hunter turned paleontologist; Tarzan, a street urchin brought up in a bordello; and Pimentel, a master canoe pilot. They travel together even farther into the rainforest, set up camp, and survey every living woody plant in a land so rich that an area of less than fifty acres contains three times as many tree species as all of North America. Campbell knows the trees individually, has watched them grow from seedling to death. He also knows the people of the Amazon: the recently arrived colonists with their failing farms; the mixed-blood Caboclos, masters of hunting, fishing, and survival; and the refugee Native Americans. Campbell introduces us to two remarkable women, Dona Cabocla, a widow who raised six children on that lonely frontier, and Dona Ausira, A Nokini Native American who is the last speaker of her tribe's ages-old language. These people live in a land whose original inhabitants were wiped out by centuries of disease, slavery, and genocide, taking their traditions and languages with them -- a land of ghosts.
Customer Reviews:
One month later Still waiting for the book.......2007-10-09
I wouldn't mind reviewing this book but I still haven't recieved it yet. It's now a month since you posted it, perhaps you could please chase it up. Thankyou
Paul Lightfoot
AMAZING TRAVEL AND SCIENCE WRITING ON THE AMAZON.......2006-09-08
Though there are many books that describe nature in the Amazon, David Campbell definitely is among the top writers on it. In this book he offers, from start to finish, a very interesting mix between storytelling with lyrical qualities and scientific analysis with social commentary.
He is a scientist, focused on botany, and his knowledge of all aspects of science related to the forest are outstanding. We learn about the strategies employed by frogs to reproduce, or by snakes to identify prey, or by trees to attach polen to beetles. While learning about the science behind such activities and how they evolved, the author leads the reader through his travel log, meeting people and species and learning much about the history of the region he is visiting.
Besides all the interesting science, the author also provides a very deep character description of the people who live in this remote frontier. The stories range from rubber tappers left over from a period of abundance, to old indians who became westernized, to occupants moving there from the south due to government incentives. Each has a story and a way to deal with the challenges of the forest; some have a way to prosper in the exact same circumstances in which others fail. Some characters are presented as integrated in the forest, some as aliens beaten by the forest, some as leaders beating the forest.
Most amazing than all the history, social aspects and science however are the narrative abilities of the author. The book is a work of art, as it becomes clear that every word has been hand picked and every metaphor was chosen to provide the reader with the correct image, texture, taste, sound and smell of the forest. Reading is an experience of immersion and is to be savoured as very few books provide such a deep experience. It becomes quite clear to anyone reading the book that the author has a deep connection with his subject, much beyond science.
This book is the very best description of the Amazon I have encountered, written with gusto. It is the kind of book you will wish you had written. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the region, in nature writing or in popular science.
Richly textured.......2005-07-14
This book delivered much more than I expected. The author is a scientist, not just a traveler. Each observation went several steps deeper into the biology and history than typical with this kind of book. The story was made much richer by these details.
It is true that the vocabulary was a bit advanced. However, I never bothered to check the dictionary, and it didn't hurt the narrative.
Highly recommended.
Excellent!.......2005-07-06
A Land of Ghosts is a splendid journey through Amazonian Brazil. Infused with enlightened historical, ecological, and anthropological perspective, Campbell stands alone in his ability to fuse eloquent science writing with a tale of adventure. At times haunting, this book reveals the deep causes of rainforest destruction in the region. However, this book presents these causes in a unique way, and, at least for me, marks a new style of conservation advocation. Indeed, a refreshing one. If you have any interest in tropical ecology, and like works by such authors as David Quammen or Tim Flannery you will love this brilliant work.
some good, some bad.......2005-06-03
The "good" is that there are some very interesting stories in the book. The "bad" is that, in my opinion, it rambles in some places, especially in the last half of the book. Another "bad" is that the author uses a lot of uncommon words that only someone with an incredible vocabulary would understant. Example: page 127 (picked at random)uses the words: Flummoxed, estivation, tropeiro, mealy, prehensile, transect, naunce, anthocyanins, cotyledoms, transect, bromeliads. Trying to get through that for over 200 pages was a workout for me. The author also uses meters and hectars, not feet and acres, so distances and area are hard to understand. In addition he uses a lot of Portuguese words. There is a Portuguese glossary in the back if you don't mind flipping back and forth while you read, which I don't take the time to do. The author is an excellent writer, too bad it is so difficult to read.
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In the Society of Nature: A Native Ecology in Amazonia (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology)
Philippe Descola
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Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives (European Association of Social Anthropologists)
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Spirit of the Shuar: Wisdom from the Last Unconquered People of the Amazon
ASIN: 0521574676 |
Book Description
The Achuar Indians live in the remote forest reaches of the Upper Amazon and have developed sophisticated strategies of resource management. Philippe Descola documents their rich knowledge of the environment.
Book Description
Landscapes of Power and Identity is a groundbreaking comparative history of two colonies on the frontiers of the Spanish empireâthe Sonora region of northwestern Mexico and the Chiquitos region of eastern Bolivia’s lowlandsâfrom the late colonial period through the middle of the nineteenth century. An innovative combination of environmental and cultural history, this book reflects Cynthia Radding’s more than two decades of research on Mexico and Bolivia and her consideration of the relationships between human societies and the geographic landscapes they inhabit and create. At first glance, Sonora and Chiquitos are quite different: one a scrub-covered desert, the other a tropical rainforest of the greater Amazonian and Paraguayan river basins. Yet the regions are similar in many ways. Both were located far from the centers of colonial authority, organized into Jesuit missions and linked to the principal mining centers of New Spain and the Andes, and then absorbed into nation-states in the nineteenth century. In each area, the indigenous communities encountered European governors, missionaries, slave hunters, merchants, miners, and ranchers.
Radding’s comparative approach illuminates what happened when similar institutions of imperial governance, commerce, and religion were planted in different physical and cultural environments. She draws on archival documents, published reports by missionaries and travelers, and previous histories as well as ecological studies and ethnographies. She also considers cultural artifacts, including archaeological remains, architecture, liturgical music, and religious dances. Radding demonstrates how colonial encounters were conditioned by both the local landscape and cultural expectations; how the colonizers and colonized understood notions of territory and property; how religion formed the cultural practices and historical memories of the Sonoran and Chiquitano peoples; and how the conflict between the indigenous communities and the surrounding creole societies developed in new directions well into the nineteenth century.
Book Description
This definitive book represents the life's work of the late Richard Evans Schultes, one of the fathers of modern ethnobotany and the greatest plant explorer of our age, including nearly 50 years of field research in the Northwest Amazon.
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Entheogens: Professional Listing.......1999-05-01
"The Healing Forest" has been selected for listing in "Religion and Psychoactive Sacraments: An Entheogen Chrestomathy." http://www.csp.org/chrestomathy
Excellent.......1997-07-21
Technical, but excellent. Photos are stunning
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- Excellent for teaching
- intelligent policies
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Human Impacts on Amazonia: The Role of Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Conservation and Development (Biology and Resource Management Series)
Darrell A. Posey , and
Michael J. Balick
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
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Excellent for teaching.......2007-04-06
I found this edited collection excellent for teaching about indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin and their relation to the environment, to the environmetalists, the anthropologists, and the settlers. There is a thoughtful analysis on how many treat indigenous cultures as commodities. Marcela Mendoza
intelligent policies.......2006-10-10
The future of the Amazon is often of international concern. Amidst fears that encroaching development might ultimately eradicate it. To address these concerns, the book can be usefully read. Its contributors look at various aspects. From its history and its native peoples to its wetlands and rivers.
Another vital topic is the soil quality. One chapter explains that the soils are often fragile, after deforestation. The quality of crops grown on these soils is often good for only a few years. After which, extensive fertiliser usage is required, especially of phosphates. Also, in other cases, the cleared land has poor soil. Giving not even those few good years of harvestable crops. Greater knowledge of this might inhibit the temptation for ongoing clearing. In previous decades, it was not fully known or appreciated, leading to massive land clearings that Brazil might now regret.
Amazon.com
With Amazonia, James Marcus adds to the ever-simmering stew of Amazon.com analysis a new, almost quaint perspective: that of an employee hired for his expertise in literature. Marcus traces the company's familiar climb, plummet, and re-ascent, but this time we witness the pyrotechnics from the book-strewn hallways of the editorial department.
After an abbreviated heydey, editorial talent lost cachet at the burgeoning Internet behemoth, replaced by metrics worship and automated innovations like "truncating widgets." Despite the demoralizing shift, Marcus makes evident the loyalty editors continued to display, a "quasi-religious devotion… almost impossible to explain to outsiders." The concept of making history was just too intoxicating for most to abandon (as were the stock options).
Marcus's writing has enough genuine humor and self-deprecation to squelch any accusations of "optimizing for optics," or worse, whining. Aside from a few sections that feel somewhat adrift (oblique mentions of an imploding marriage and an extended Emerson sidebar) the prose is driving and the voice engaging and remarkably fair.
For anyone who worked at Amazon.com in the early days, reading Amazonia is akin to leafing through a high school yearbook (I was an Amazon editor from 1997-2002). Nostalgia is inescapable--even for the irritations of the time, like All Hands Meetings (pep rallies) and the exaltation of MBAs (the popular kids). The thing about yearbooks, though, is that we're really only interested in our own. Whether outsiders will be as captivated by this surf down virtual memory lane is questionable. For alums, it's a lasting keepsake. --Brangien Davis
Book Description
Employee #55's story of the first five years of Amazon.com, which "brims with fascinating Amazoniana." (The Los Angeles Times)
In a book that Ian Frazier has called, "a fascinating and sometimes hair-raising morality tale from deep inside the Internet boom," James Marcus, hired by Amazon.com in 1996, when the company was so small his e-mail address could be james@amazon.com, looks back a decade later at the ecstatic rise, dramatic fall, and remarkable comeback of the consummate symbol of late 1990s America.
Observing "how it was to be in the right place (Seattle) at the right time (the 90s)" (Chicago Reader), Marcus offers a ringside seat on everything from his first interview with Jeff Bezos to the company's bizarre, Nordic-style retreats, creating what Jonathan Raban calls "an utterly beguiling book." For this first paperback edition, Marcus has added a new afterword with further reflections on his Amazon experience.
In the tradition of the most noteworthy and entertaining memoirs of recent years, Marcus offers us a modern-day fable, "a clear-eyed, first-person account, rife with digressions on the larger cultural meaning throughout" (Henry Alford, Newsday).
Customer Reviews:
I enjoyed Amazonia........2007-09-26
I liked it, it was worth reading. What amazes me is the length of the reviews and depth on this book. The authors point is well proven that idiots will write reviews for free, Jeff smiles as the cash register ads to the rocketship fund.
Excellent Insight - Stunningly Honest.......2007-02-04
An exceptional, exclusive, and original look into the inner workings of the web retail giant Amazon. Follow Marcus from his initiation as employee #55 to the highs (and lows) of his lost $9 million dollar stock fortune, and finally, his frustuartion and eventual decision to leave Amazon. Though Marcus was one of the earliest employees to be hired at Amazon, beginning his career when CEO Bezos had only dreams of becoming a retail giant, he describes the company as if he were only a passerby, a spectator. This detachment is apparent especially as Marcus laments his lost fortune, and criticizes Amazon's "culture of metrics" and their constant hiring of MBA types while continuely pushing editors from office to office like a stack of old books in their corporate warehouse.
Marcus reveals the less pretty side of giant corporations, even ones who exist in the web world, and he destroys any perception of Amazon as a caring book company which exists only to serve you to find new and creative books. Instead, Marcus paints a picture of Amazon as a money frenzied monster manipulating visitors into buying books and items sponsored by their companies, not reccomended by Amazon editors or staff.
Overall, Marcus's ramblings must be taken with a grain of salt. (Remember, he did miss out on $9 million from this company, and he was being mistreated increasingly in his last years). But, this insight into Amazon and other corporations is valuable, and insightful. Its a quick read, and it will change the way you look at Amazon - for better or worse, read it.
James captures the virtual insanity of the dot.com era.......2006-07-30
This book does far more than tell the story of one person's career experiences in the middle of the dot.com Amazon boom era. James captures throughout the book the psychological roller coaster of the paper money insanity that was the late 90's gold rush. Speculation drove insane price multiples for companies with no assets and no profits, creating millions in wealth for book editors who also spent time time packing books into boxes.
The book is written well as a first person narrative, and is quite interesting to read. James shares the events and emotions and blends them so the reader experiences some of what it was like from the trenches. I laughed out loud at his depiction of MBAs and absurd corporate speak which started to permeate the once pureness of literary service provided by Amazon on line editors. While most of the moves Jeff Bezos made paid off for Amazon, it was hard for the author to write about some of the dot.com ventures and the insane prices paid for acquisitions, many of which are comical in retrospect.
Perhaps the most compelling aspect of the book is the manner in which he captures the conflicting emotions of paper wealth created by the dot.com frenzy. He depicts the simmering resentment of other corporate employees as Amazon moved to an office building downtown and the unconventional Amazon employees, with their paper millions, began to rub elbows with banking employees working hard for normal wages.
The only complaint I had was when he veered off subject with a chapter long diatribe on literary commentary. Granted, he was a book editor and therefore is knowledgeable on the subject, but it seemed a bit pedantic and detracted from the commentary on the company.
Overall, I really enjoyed the prose and the internal perspective on the rise of one of the dot.com survivors. Writing a review on Amazon, on a book about Amazon, by an editor of books for Amazon, is a bit surreal. The irony aside, I recommend this book as a fun personal story and a historical retrospective on a unique era.
Entertaining look at a "utopian frat house"..........2006-05-27
Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot.com Juggernaut by James Marcus is an entertaining little book about one man's experience working as a book reviewer for Amazon.
James Marcus signed up for Amazon as employee number 77 and watched the company soar to over 8000 employees. At the beginning, the author calls the company a "utopian frat house," and something that "resembled a science project executed by the smartest kid in the class." Jeff Bezos was going places, and working at Amazon in the beginning was as exciting as a thrill ride. While pay and benefits weren't always the best, the stock options were mind boggling. At one time, Marcus' stock options were worth $9 million on paper.
In the course of his five year tenure, the author wrote reviews, interviewed authors, selected featured books, took care of the homepage, and gave interviews to CNN on holiday book selections. When the holidays approached, almost all employees were expected to spend time in the warehouse. Marcus writes a witty account of working the conveyer belt trying to package book orders, "surely we were in Lucy-and-Ethel territory here."
Unfortunately, Amazon stumbled as it grew and it started accumulating other companies and trying new products. Soon they were selling toys, internet cards, tools, electronics, kitchen wares and featuring an on-line auction (similar to eBay). Some of these ventures sunk like a stone, and soon weeds were starting to take over this "high-tech hot house." The dot.com market also tumbled and Amazon stock prices went with it.
I thought that Amazonia could have included a little more about the author's personal life. He gives only very brief snippets of what is happening on that level. Also, Marcus likes to impress us with his giant vocabulary, which gets distracting at times. I also thought the comparisons between Emerson and the internet a stretch. But Amazonia is still a fine book and I walked away with a better understanding of the world of Amazon and the genius of Jeff Bezos. I also wrote down a number of book recommendations. Marcus also has a shrewd eye for observing books, authors and readers. One observation I liked is "READERS AND WRITERS: their mating rituals are as strange, as intricate and engrossing, as anything you'll ever see on the Discovery Channel." So, Amazonia is a must read for a serious Amazon reviewer.
Not a diatribe, but an entertaining look from the inside.......2006-04-20
Marcus' work is often portrayed as an indictment of Amazon, or the work of a disgruntled ex-employee. Even the cover of this book shows the Amazon "smiley" logo upside-down as a frown. But these are not adequate descriptions of this book. From the time where Marcus joins the staff at employee number 60-something through the majority of the book, until the dot-com bubble bursts, it is a mostly positive look at Amazon, and the experience of working there. And his portrayal of company founder Jeff Bezos is unfailingly positive. Why should it surprise anyone that when the bubble burst, and the stock tanked, and people were laid off, that the narrative of life at Amazon would lose its glow? This is a tail of the heady days mostly, but also of the corporat-ization and disillusionment that followed. The negative coverage of Amazon.com is the not baseless complaints of the disgruntled, but is an acute observations of staff demoralization, and the ham-handed (and brief) presidency of Joe Galli. Amazon's pendulum did indeed swing from the heady early days, to the funk at Marcus' departure, and now rests stably at the middle: a place offering some cool perks and big corporate "Dilbert"ism in equal shares.
Marcus' coverage of the ride is an enjoyable read. He never claims knowledge beyond his station as some other reviewers seem to imply. He does however offer clear observations of what he saw, when he saw it. His propensity for using a $20 word where a nickel one would suffice is irritating, and his "pointy-headed" academic references (the worst being an extended Emerson sidebar taking up an entire chapter) make you want to simply skip such passages. But overall he is a good story-teller, and he is after all telling it in his own voice -- officious as it may sometimes be. Overall he comes off very genuine, and ultimately entertaining.
Customer Reviews:
Four reviews by professionals.......2000-05-03
Here are short excerpts of what some professional anthropologists have written in reviews of this book in major journals:
John Bodley - "Very timely collection...examines key issues...a self-conscious and very successful attempt to combine basic and applied perspectives...." (American Anthropologist June 1996).
Jerome Levi - "For those who thought that as our discipline approaches the third millennium ecological anthropology had subsided beneath the waves of postmodernism, this book will come as a virtual tsunami." (American Ethnologist November 1995).
Bartholomew Dean - "This volume is a most welcome addition to our emergent understanding of the political ecology of lowland South America... For those complacent about the future of Amazonia and the region's inhabitants, this book provides a clarion call to action." (Cultural Survival Quarterly Fall 1995).
Richard Reed - "The volume provides strategic lessons.... the authors survey Amazonian realities ignored by recent developers.... the volume raises critical issues involved in protecting forests and peoples from the ravages of development." (Journal of Anthropological Research Spring 1997).
Read the full reviews and/or the book and judge for yourself!
Four reviews by professionals.......2000-05-03
Here are short excerpts of what some professional anthropologists have written in reviews of this book in major journals:
John Bodley - "Very timely collection...examines key issues...a self-conscious and very successful attempt to combine basic and applied perspectives...." (American Anthropologist June 1996).
Jerome Levi - "For those who thought that as our discipline approaches the third millennium ecological anthropology had subsided beneath the waves of postmodernism, this book will come as a virtual tsunami." (American Ethnologist November 1995).
Bartholomew Dean - "This volume is a most welcome addition to our emergent understanding of the political ecology of lowland South America... For those complacent about the future of Amazonia and the region's inhabitants, this book provides a clarion call to action." (Cultural Survival Quarterly Fall 1995).
Richard Reed - "The volume provides strategic lessons.... the authors survey Amazonian realities ignored by recent developers.... the volume raises critical issues involved in protecting forests and peoples from the ravages of development." (Journal of Anthropological Research Spring 1997).
Read the full reviews and/or the book and judge for yourself!
Could be much better..........2000-04-23
Indigenous Peoples and the Future of Amazonia is an anthology which boasts contributions from archaeologists, anthropologists, cultural ecologists and nutritionists, its input from the indigenous population is limited to a two-page forward by Simeon Jimenez and Nelly Arvelo-Jimenez.
Sponsel mentions that an earnest attempt was made to include authors from the nine Amazonian countries. However, in the end, only three of the authors are from South America.
Perhaps I'd hoped for a more activist approach, or at least, a ground-based examination of current environmental practices and potential strategies. Instead, this is a scholarly book which sticks its nose in the pages of future academic research and does not appear to be looking up. The book provides no action plan and few resources or contacts for interested readers.
Still, in its own way, this is an interesting volume and offers more than a handful of insightful gems.
Book Description
This collection examines past patterns of destructive resource extraction in Amazonia and, more importantly, critically analyses a series of newer initiatives that offer more sustainable options. These include: new production strategies such as agroforestry, innovative resource governance models such as inland fisheries co-management, and agro-ecological zoning. The challenge at this critical juncture is how to integrate such policies into mainstream development within Amazonia.
Books:
- Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
- Bleeding Hearts (China Bayles Mystery)
- Blue Highways: A Journey into America
- Bones Would Rain From the Sky: Deepening Our Relationships with Dogs
- Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir
- Brokeback Mountain: Now a Major Motion Picture
- C Is for Corpse (Kinsey Millhone Mysteries)
- Calculated Risks: How to Know When Numbers Deceive You
- Childhood Shadows: The Hidden Story of the Black Dahlia Murder
- City of Bones (Mortal Instruments)
Books Index
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