The Everything War: Amazon’s Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power

Wall Street Journal reporter Mattioli debuts with a blistering exposé of how Amazon used its “size, leverage, and access to data across industries to choke competition.” According to Mattioli, Amazon’s enormous growth since the late 1990s was fueled by a business model that dominated industries by introducing low prices (even when it meant operating at a loss) to lure customers away from competitors, who rarely had the resources to outlast Amazon’s steep discounts. Once rivals had been bankrupted or bought out, Amazon would raise prices again. Mattioli’s impressive reporting—which draws on internal documents and hundreds of interviews with employees, senior executives, and government officials—recreates the company’s conquests in disturbing detail. For instance, Mattioli recounts how Amazon lost $200 million in one month selling discounted diapers to force Quidsi, parent company of Diapers.com, to the bargaining table, and threatened to give diapers away if the company didn’t capitulate to Amazon’s takeover bid (Amazon acquired Quidsi in 2010). Mattioli also delves into Federal Trade Commission chairperson Lina Khan’s lawsuit against Amazon for “maintaining an illegal monopoly,” presenting Khan as a heroic underdog for suing over the objections of her risk-averse colleagues at the FTC. Mattioli spins the legal wrangling into surprisingly riveting reading, and the meticulous accounts of Amazon’s nefarious practices outrage. This is investigative journalism at its finest. Agent: Eric Lupfer, UTA. (Apr.)