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Comment by coolsank | Hacker News Reader

And here's the author's response

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-11-05/responding-t...

MacKenzie Bezos: Everywhere I can fact check from personal knowledge, I find way too many inaccuracies, and unfortunately that casts doubt over every episode in the book.

Brad Stone: Mrs. Bezos also suggests that there are a handful of factual errors in my account.

There is something slippery about the way Brad Stone writes.

Indeed, but the two may not be mutually exclusive. "Everywhere I can fact check from personal knowledge" doesn't automatically mean more than a handful

Given that her personal knowledge extends more than twenty years, I would say that it's safe to assume that it's more than a handful.

There's something slippery about the way Mrs. Bezos writes as well.

She says: "Readers should remember that Jeff was never interviewed for this book."

She conveniently elides the fact that Brad Stone has interviewed Bezos several times for previous articles, and has written about Amazon for a decade or more.

It is certainly tricky, however, for an author to suggest he/she knows what a subject was thinking/feeling in the past.

This was posted yesterday on Reddit in writing tips. It's advice from Chuck Palahniuk (author of Fight Club) to never use 'thinking' verbs wrt your characters. It's for fiction, but I think it is every better applied for non-fiction. Mr. Stone should have a look at it.

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1pwh3z/what_small...

Thanks for the link. That was a great read.

Not much of a response really. Doesn't try to counter-argue any specific point made. It could be boiled down to 'I'm a good, honest writer, trust me'

(I've no opinion here on who is right or wrong, haven't even read the book)

His wife sounds like one hell of a women. I loved the "third world prison" comment.

And here's Amazon's response to that - http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/05/amazon-replies-to-authors-r...

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