Reviewed by Lawrence De Maria

Much like the company it profiles, Richard L. Brandt’s One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com starts out slowly. But the narrative soon picks up the pace, mirroring the spectacular expansion of an organization that has changed the face of world industry.

Before going any further, an explanation is in order. “One Click” refers to the technology that allows an Amazon customer to buy a product by clicking on one button on the Amazon website, actually called a “One Click” button. Like most everything else about Amazon, it is something laymen take for granted, but it was sheer brilliance in design and implementation, and is now much copied. (Whether the term should be used for a book title is another matter.)

One Click is a short book, clocking in at 224 pages. It is by no means the definitive history of Amazon or a fulfilling biography of its founder, Jeff Bezos, both of which have yet to be written. For one thing, Bezos apparently did not cooperate with Brandt, an omission that, not surprisingly, weakens any biographical portrait of someone still alive. (It’s forgivable if the subject is dead, of course.) Considering that Bezos made his fortune selling books, one would think he’d be more forthcoming to an obviously friendly author.

Brandt had to rely on previously published profiles of Bezos and Amazon. The fact that he went ahead may represent his desire to get a book out there quickly. Or it may be a concession to the shrinking attention span among readers that the Internet — and Amazon — may be fostering.

Despite its shortcomings, One Click can serve as a primer for people who want to know why Amazon — indeed, the Internet — has so drastically altered the world we live in.

Brandt, a former award-winning technology correspondent for Business Week, is now a full-time freelance journalist and author. He wrote Inside Larry and Sergey’s Brain (Portfolio/Penguin), about Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s founders. One Click was initially titled Inside Jeff’s Brain, but that apparently would have been a stretch without actual access to the man who houses the grey matter.

But Brandt soldiered on and what we are left with is half a loaf, which as you know is …

Even without Bezos’ involvement, it is not difficult to get a sense of the man’s driven personality and innovative genius. Unlike what many people might assume, Bezos was successful in any number of investment and technology companies long before Amazon. He was a star wherever he put his hat, and investors rarely had any compunction about funding his ideas, even if they couldn’t understand half of them. Reading Brandt’s book now makes one wonder what they were thinking. Brandt explains how most of Bezos’ ideas eventually succeeded, but that’s Monday-morning quarterbacking. In 1995 and the years immediately following, Bezos was so far ahead of the Internet marketing curve he was lapping the other players.

Where did Jeff Bezos come from? Born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen in 1964, he took the name of his stepfather, Mike Bezos, a hard-charging refugee from Castro’s Cuba who married his mother after Jeff’s biological father divorced his teen-age bride. This could have been a recipe for a reality show. Instead, both the Bezos clan and Jeff’s mother’s family were well educated, ambitious and talented people. Jeff’s maternal grandfather was a rocket scientist (that figures) who became a regional manager for the Atomic Energy Commission. Jeff didn’t fall far from either family’s tree.

Brandt does a good job tracing Jeff Bezos’ rise from a promising (if quirky) student through a variety of Wall Street jobs to the young entrepreneur’s realization that just about everyone else was missing the Internet marketing boat. Bezos had an uncanny ability to see what the Internet could do, but also had the foresight to realize that books — which represent a 500-year-old technology — were the perfect vehicle for creating a company that could quickly overwhelm rivals in the short term and expand exponentially in the long term. While others were trying to sell glitzy widgets to millions of new computer owners, Bezos was shipping the books that everyone in the world still read. They were relatively cheap and light to ship (compared to, say, a hard drive or a washing machine).

Brandt is best when describing Bezos’ intellectual Internet leaps, his uncanny, counterintuitive marketing ploys and the technology Amazon pioneered. (The section on the Kindle is awe-inspiring.) He flags somewhat in dealing with the criticisms of Amazon, especially those of its “cult-like” work environment. And some of the writing groans: “Suffering like a CEO with the swine flu” or “undulate in between like waves on a Waikiki beach.”

As the world knows, Amazon graduated from being a bookseller (although it is still the world’s largest) into peddling — often as a third party — just about everything under the sun. Bezos never chased profits, which was why Amazon’s stock didn’t avoid losing 90 percent of its value in the dot.com crash of 1999. In fact, much of the criticism of Bezos, which is detailed in One Click, derives from his willingness to undercut all his rivals. Traditional booksellers and the publishing industry in general have pilloried him, loftily accusing him of destroying the competitive environment that fosters great literature. Retailers of other products are almost as vocal.

It’s not all sour grapes or the fulminations of soon-to-be obsolesced buggy whip makers. Bezos has broken a lot of eggs to make the Amazon omelet. He cut a lot of corners to increase market share and revenues, which he plowed back into the product, people and technology that keeps his brainchild ahead of the pack.

Even though Bezos didn’t cooperate with Brandt, he should be delighted in One Click. For if this thin volume makes one point in particular, it is that betting against Amazon’s future with Bezos in the saddle would be like betting against Secretariat.

Lawrence De Maria was a senior editor and writer at The New York Times and Forbes whose many Page 1 articles led the Times’ Pulitzer-nominated coverage of the 1987 stock market crash. Now living in Naples, Fla., he writes short stories and novels as well as book and film reviews. His latest novel, Sound of Blood, is available as an e-book at Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or through his website: www.lawrencedemaria.com.