Max Brand Quotes

A Poem By Max White is the color of little bunnies with pink noses. White is the color of fluffy clouds fluffing their way across the sky. White is the color of angel's wings and Angel's wings. White is the color of brand-new ankle socks fresh out of the bag. White is the color of crisp sheets in schmancy hotels. White is the color of every last freaking, gol-danged thing you see for endless miles and miles if you happen to be in Antarctica trying to save the world, which now you aren't so sure you can do because you feel like if you see any more whiteness-Wonder Bread, someone's underwear, teeth-you will completely and totally lose your ever-lovin' mind and wind up pushing a grocery cart full of empty cans around New York City, muttering to yourself. That was my first poem ever. Okay, so it's not Shakespeare, but I liked it.

Words," said the host, at length, "is worse'n bullets. You never know what they'll hit.

When in doubt, head into the wind.

First, the weather got hotter every day, and the hay press broke down every day. Second, the boss fell in love with Marian Wray, and the hay press broke down every day. Third, inside of forty-eight hours everybody on that crew hated everybody else, and the hay press broke down every day. Fourth, and most important of all, the hay press broke down every day.

To love you to the max is to do what God calls me to do - to help you grow closer to him, to endure with you, to pursue shalom with you, to hope for all things, to suffer with you. To be an example of Christ to you.

By weaponizing the discourse of human rights to justify the use of force against governments that resisted the Washington consensus, this group of well-connected liberals was able to stir support where the neocons could not. Their brand of interventionism appealed directly to the sensibility of the Democratic Party's metropolitan base, large swaths of academia, the foundation-funded human rights NGO complex, and the New York Times editorial board. The xhibition of atrocities allegedly committed by adversarial governments, either by Western-funded civil society groups, major human rights organizations or the mainstream press, was the military humanists' stock in trade, enabling them to mask imperial designs behind a patina of "genocide prevention." With this neat tactic, they effectively neutralized progressive antiwar elements and tarred those who dared to protest their wars as dictator apologists.

awakened her.

while Trump was conducting trade negotiations with China, a Chinese state-owned bank provided $500 million in financing for a project in Indonesia that includes “Trump-branded residences, hotels and golf course.”53 China also provided seven new trademarks for products sold by Ivanka Trump.54 Within days, Trump shocked national security professionals by announcing that he would lift sanctions on the Chinese telecom giant ZTE.

This shift was part and parcel with Thiel’s other project: an attempt to impose a brand of extreme libertarianism that shifts power from traditional institutions toward startup companies and the billionaires who control them.

For a long time, it was one of these things where—I was really much younger than now—my whole "brand" both to the investors and to our board members was this crazy Russian boy-genius who comes out and sprinkles magic dust on technology and things just work.

No one loves doing rowing intervals, max-effort squats, or studying for ten hours at a time. As Mat would say, That shit hurts. There’s nothing fun about waking up and doing things you’re bad at, over and over again. It takes an extraordinary amount of grit to commit yourself to that brand of torture.

Ed McBain (as Evan Hunter and Richard Marsten), Raymond Chandler, Cornell Woolrich, Andrew Vachss, Loren D. Estleman, Carroll John Daly, Brett Halliday, Raoul Whitfield, Mark Timlin, Richard Prather, Leigh Brackett, Erle Stanley Gardner (pre Perry Mason), James Ellroy, Clark Howard, Max Brand. In addition, rising paper costs prevented me from making this volume even heavier, as I had to withdraw material by Ed Gorman, James Reasoner, Ed Lacy, Frank Gruber, Loren D. Estleman, Derek Raymond, Robert Edmond Alter, Frederick C. Davis and Jonathan Craig – so look out for these names elsewhere. They are certainly worth a detour. But the

A slope of buttercups flashed suddenly when the wind struck it and wild morning glory spotted a stretch of daisies with purple and dainty lavender. To be sure, the blossoms never grew thickly enough to make strong dashes of color, but they tinted and stained the hillsides. He began to cross noisy little watercourses, empty most of the year, but now the melting snow fed them. From eddies and quiet pools the bright watercress streamed out into the currents,

It rises from the funeral pyre of rubble, ash and scorched memories to stare Max in the eyeballs, stand right over him in his lonely bed and whisper a hissing, fire-branding warning in his dreams, ‘Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust…’ over and over again, so close to his face he can feel the heat emanating from the fiery lick of its crispy tongue. Fireman is trying to tell him something he already knows, but Max doesn’t know it yet. Wake up, damn you! It’s staring you in the face…

It’s a cliché that tech workers don’t care about what they wear, but if you look closely at those T-shirts, you’ll see the logos of the wearers’ companies—and tech workers care about those very much. What makes a startup employee instantly distinguishable to outsiders is the branded T-shirt or hoodie that makes him look the same as his co-workers. The startup uniform encapsulates a simple but essential principle: everyone at your company should be different in the same way—a tribe of like-minded people fiercely devoted to the company’s mission. Max Levchin, my co-founder

1) Levophed—a common blood pressure medication. Used to be called “leave ’em dead” because people used it for the sickest of the sick in sepsis and those patients still frequently died, but it has now come back into favor. We were maxed. 2) Vasopressin—another BP med. Not titratable. Left on normal dose. 3) Phenylephrine, aka Neo, from its brand name, Neosynephrine—another BP med—maxed. Pharmacy was mixing higher concentrations of this for us, so that we could give it in less fluid volume for the patient’s sake. 4) Sodium Bicarb—also high-concentrated dose for fluid reasons—given to attempt to combat patient’s acidosis. 5) Fentanyl—pain control—not maxed. 6) Versed—an amnesiac—hopefully makes you “less aware” of WTF is happening to you. Also not maxed, because they were also on…. 7) Nimbex—a paralytic we give to patients to make them “ride the vent” so that they don’t fight it and can save energy, as the vent does the work of breathing for them. 8) Heparin—blood thinner, to reduce the clotting that covid can cause. 9) Amiodarone—heart med, stops arrhythmias. 10) Insulin—which requires hourly insulin checks to titrate effectively. Unfortunately, many covid patients are also on steroids, which means their blood sugars fluctuate all over the place.

In my introduction to Warriors, the first of our crossgenre anthologies, I talked about growing up in Bayonne, New Jersey, in the 1950s, a city without a single bookstore. I bought all my reading material at newsstands and the corner “candy shops,” from wire spinner racks. The paperbacks on those spinner racks were not segregated by genre. Everything was jammed in together, a copy of this, two copies of that. You might find The Brothers Karamazov sandwiched between a nurse novel and the latest Mike Hammer yarn from Mickey Spillane. Dorothy Parker and Dorothy Sayers shared rack space with Ralph Ellison and J. D. Salinger. Max Brand rubbed up against Barbara Cartland. A. E. van Vogt, P. G. Wodehouse, and H. P. Lovecraft were crammed in with F. Scott Fitzgerald. Mysteries, Westerns, gothics, ghost stories, classics of English literature, the latest contemporary “literary” novels, and, of course, SF and fantasy and horror—you could find it all on that spinner rack, and ten thousand others like it. I liked it that way. I still do. But in the decades since (too many decades, I fear), publishing has changed, chain bookstores have multiplied, the genre barriers have hardened. I think that’s a pity. Books should broaden us, take us to places we have never been and show us things we’ve never seen, expand our horizons and our way of looking at the world. Limiting your reading to a single genre defeats that. It limits us, makes us smaller. It seemed to me, then as now, that there were good stories and bad stories, and that was the only distinction that truly mattered.

Weston, having been born in Chicago, was raised with typical, well-grounded, mid-western values. On his 16th birthday, his father gave him a Kodak camera with which he started what would become his lifetime vocation. During the summer of 1908, Weston met Flora May Chandler, a schoolteacher who was seven years older than he was. The following year the couple married and in time they had four sons. Weston and his family moved to Southern California and opened a portrait studio on Brand Boulevard, in the artsy section of Glendale, California, called Tropico. His artistic skills soon became apparent and he became well known for his portraits of famous people, such as Carl Sandburg and Max Eastman. In the autumn of 1913, hearing of his work, Margrethe Mather, a photographer from Los Angeles, came to his studio, where Weston asked her to be his studio assistant. It didn’t take long before the two developed a passionate, intimate relationship. Both Weston and Mather became active in the growing bohemian cultural scene in Los Angeles. She was extremely outgoing and artistic in a most flamboyant way. Her bohemian sexual values were new to Weston’s conventional thinking, but Mather excited him and presented him with a new outlook that he found enticing. Mather was beautiful, and being bisexual and having been a high-class prostitute, was delightfully worldly. Mather's uninhibited lifestyle became irresistible to Weston and her photography took him into a new and exciting art form. As Mather worked and overtly played with him, she presented a lifestyle that was in stark contrast to Weston’s conventional home life, and he soon came to see his wife Flora as a person with whom he had little in common. Weston expanded his horizons but tried to keep his affairs with other women a secret. As he immersed himself further into nude photography, it became more difficult to hide his new lifestyle from his wife. Flora became suspicious about this secret life, but apparently suffered in silence. One of the first of many women who agreed to model nude for Weston was Tina Modotti. Although Mather remained with Weston, Tina soon became his primary model and remained so for the next several years. There was an instant attraction between Tina Modotti, Mather and Edward Weston, and although he remained married, Tina became his student, model and lover. Richey soon became aware of the affair, but it didn’t seem to bother him, as they all continued to remain good friends. The relationship Tina had with Weston could definitely be considered “cheating,” since knowledge of the affair was withheld as much as possible from his wife Flora May. Perhaps his wife knew and condoned this new promiscuous relationship, since she had also endured the intense liaison with Margrethe Mather. Tina, Mather and Weston continued working together until Tina and Weston suddenly left for Mexico in 1923. As a group, they were all a part of the cozy, artsy, bohemian society of Los Angeles, which was where they were introduced to the then-fashionable, communistic philosophy.

he

The pen moved across my skin, but I couldn’t see what he was writing, his messy hair blocking my view. “Excuse me, sir, but what are you doing? Are you branding me?” “Stop calling me sir. I’m trying to focus here and you’re making me hard.” “You’ve been hard for the past eight hours. What’s new?” “You’d think you would have tried to help me with this difficult situation. Honestly, Georgia, I’m disappointed. You really need to work a little harder at this whole girlfriend thing.

perfect evil always wins something akin to admiration from more common people.

It had been very well done, Ronicky decided, Blondy had acquitted himself with just the right edge to his voice. He had not been sickeningly acquiescent. Neither had he been stupidly defiant. But

he had avoided the full brunt of danger and still retained his dignity. And

he had said it in such a manner that they were fairly certain he would never make what he had done a subject of boasting. There

If it doesn’t make callouses on a girl’s hands it will make them on her heart. I’ve been waiting all my life for a chance, and the chance has never come.” Something flared in her.

the stranger met every remark; not a thoughtful pause, but rather as though he wondered if it were worth while to make any answer.

I’ve come here for the silence,” he said. “Silence,” repeated

if a man ain’t got the heart inside, it don’t make no difference how big around the chest he measures.

a gent gets his reward when he sees other people happy. As

That night, they sat around the hotel room with a bottle of tequila and some salt and limes and talked about names for the new real estate company. A few ideas sprang up right away but got rejected just as fast. A half bottle of tequila later, the name "Real Estate Maximums Incorporated" was tossed around as a possibility. Nobody spoke for a moment because everyone liked it. Maximums meant that everyone would get the most out of the relationship-real estate agents and customers alike. The name did a good job of communicating the everybody wins principle at the heart of the endeavor. But after a few more minutes, they realized it didn't quite work. It wasn't snappy enough for a good brand name, and it was too long to fit on a real estate sign. More tequila got poured. No one could come up with another name that felt as on-target as Real Estate Maximums. Someone suggested shortening it to R. E. Max. That made it snappier and appealing in a brand name sense; but when you wrote it out, it looked too much like a real person's name. You could imagine junk mail arriving at the office in care of Mr. and Mrs. R. E. Max. Collins pointed out that Exxon had formed only a few years before, and the X with a slash through it looked very smart. So Liniger took out the dots and tried a slash through the middle of the word and then capitalized all the letters. They looked at the pad of paper and saw: RE/MAX. A silence came over them, followed by a few backslaps and cheers. Everything about the word looked exactly right, as though they were talking about an established global company. Now, what about colors? They were on a roll. Now was no time to stop. A few more shots of tequila went around while they debated the right look for the new RE/MAX. It didn't take long to figure it out: Everyone in the room was a Vietnam vet and patriotic to the core. The colors, of course, had to be red, white, and blue. When they considered the whole package, they knew they had it. And that's how the idea for the distinctive RE/MAX brand was hatched. Considering the time and resources that get poured into brand development today, their methods might seem unorthodox if admirably effective. No money was spent on advertising agencies, market research, or trademark protection. The only investment was a decent bottle of tequila; the only focus group, a bunch of guys sitting around a room having a good laugh.

The external problem CarMax resolves is the need for a car, of course, but they hardly advertise about cars at all. They focus on their customers’ internal problems and, in doing so, entered one of the least-trusted industries in

would

Even the newest military planes had checklists that appeared on touch screens. If a hydraulic pump failed, a message would pop up showing specific actions the pilot should take. On the 737, a light showing “low hydraulic pressure” might illuminate with no further explanation. Pilots would have to rely on memory or turn to their paper handbook. “Training issue,” the Boeing executive responded to Reed, in rejecting such changes. If Boeing had been building a brand- new plane, it would have been required to have the electronic checklist. But because the MAX was being examined as an amendment to the original type certificate awarded in 1967, managers could pursue an exception. The MAX was actually the thirteenth version of the plane, counting all the variants along the way— the official application would call it an update of the 737- 100,

I take a breath, indulging in that distinct book smell. There's only one thing I love more than the smell of fresh-baked bread and that's the smell of books. Max's store is a combination of used and new books, and I find the scent intoxicating. There's something about the aroma of paper at every possible stage for a book: brand new, hot off the printing press, decades old, covered in dust and moisture. Yeah, it's probably a little weird. But I don't care. To me, it's divine.

Lemme tell you what a friend is. He's the bunkie that guards your back in a fight; he's the man that can ask for your hoss [horse] or your gun or your life, no matter how bad you want 'em; he's the gent that trusts you when the world calls you a liar; he's the one that don't grin when you're in trouble, who gives a cheer when you're going good. With a friend you let down the bars and turn your mind loose like wild hosses. I take out my soul like a gun and show it to my friend in the palm of my hand. It's sure full of holes and stains, this life of mine, but my friend checks off the good agin' the bad, and when you're through he says: 'Partner, now I like you better because I know you better.

Normally I'd never get access to the other player's kits. But these were delivered just yesterday. They're brand new for the match against Starlight Academy today.” Geraldine brushed her fingers over the bag marked Rigel with a visible shiver. “Smell that?” she breathed and I glanced at Tory. “Um...no?” Tory said. “It smells like the Heirs' lives falling apart,” she said dramatically. “Oh good,” I chuckled, hurrying forward with the Griffin poo. Geraldine produced some plastic gloves from her pocket and I had to admire how prepared she was for this. “I am happy to do it alone.” “I want to actually,” I said keenly, taking a pair and Tory plucked the other from her grip. “Yep, I'm in so long as there's gloves. You got us in here Geraldine, you've done plenty.” Geraldine's eyes brimmed with proud tears for a moment and she bowed low, stepping back to watch as I unzipped the bag and pulled out Max's navy and silver kit. It consisted of a large shirt with Waterguard printed above his surname, a pair of long shorts, socks and steel capped boots. We first turned each item inside out then I took out the solid lump of poo and broke it in half, handing one bit to Tory. (darcy)

I can’t help it,” Max groaned. “She’s like my own personal brand of fucking insane, curvaceous, utterly addictive Killblaze.

I’m so sorry. Max is sick and apparently my husband is brand-new to our household and doesn’t know where anything is.

Lady Time smiled around the table – well, not a smile. It was all stage acting. Max could practically hear Brand bark in his ear, Now is when you keep your mouth shut and let the stupid bad guy explain every stupid element of their stupid life-plan-slash-life-story.

A good general," Allister was fond of saying, "plans in two ways: for an absolute victory and for an absolute defeat. The one enables him to squeeze the last ounce of success out of a triumph; the other keeps a failure from turning into a catastrophe.

Why,’ says they to themselves, ‘I been sleeping; I ain’t been living all this!’ And they wake up and get ready to live their real lives, but they find that their real lives are just about up, and by the time they find out what they’ve done with themselves they’re ready to die.

I hate your infernal croaking, but, if you’re bound to talk, I suppose that I got to listen. Blaze away and finish up.

Life is a serious problem to a man over thirty. To a man under thirty it is simply a game.

have seen that same smile which stirs the heart of a woman and makes a man reach for his revolver.

When the leader of the pack springs and fails to kill, the rest of the pack tear him to pieces.

me." "Glendin, there have been cowardly legal murders

thousand of Hal's getting away. Four

In the Far West there is one thing which is more fabulously valuable then gold, even. And that is a story, whether it be truth or good, true-sounding fiction. Stories

the doctor saw that the fire was still raging in the hollow breast of the cattleman, but there was no longer fuel to feed it.

why do humans like him so much? Why does he mean so much to me—to Kate?” “Simply because he is different. You get from him what you could get from no other man in the world, perhaps,

There is a use for fighting men, isn’t there?” she brooded. “Use for ’em?” laughed Corson. “Why, lady, how come we to be sitting here? Because gents have fought to put us here! How come this is part of God’s country? Because a lot of folks buckled on guns to make it that! Use

The minds which one found in the pages of a book were understandable. But the minds of living men—how terrible they were! One

He saw three ugly natures, three small, cruel souls.

Some damn fools say they ain’t a God! Some damn fools! Something for nothing. That’s what He gives! Steady,

At once they were absolutely silenced, for money talks in an eloquent voice. Deliberately

There is no need for reason in a mob. One has only to cry, “Kill!” and the mob will start of its own volition to find something that may be slain. Also,

Also, a mob has no conscience and no remorse. It is the nearest thing to a devil that exists, and it is also the nearest thing to the divine mercy and courage. It

And his face—the way he laughed—why he didn’t look like no fool at all, boys. But just as if he’d waked up!

I’ll tell you, Champ, that a man has enough trouble in the world without asking for it.

Besides, most of the fellows that are ridin’ long and sleepin’ short, they have been drove out of society by the meanness of other men, and not because they wanted to go wrong.

There’s too much dressing up and not enough places to go.

They get the pleasure of being together. I get the pleasure of being alone. They

He softened his voice. “Gaspar,” he said, “keep your head up. Make up your mind that you’ll fight to the last gasp. Why, it makes me plumb sick to see a grown man give up like you do!

Lemme tell you what a friend is. He’s the bunkie that guards your back in a fight; he’s the man that can ask for your hoss or your gun or your life, no matter how bad you want ’em; he’s the gent that trusts you when the world calls you a liar; he’s the one that don’t grin when you’re in trouble, who gives a cheer when you’re going good. With a friend you let down the bars and turn your mind loose like wild hosses. I take out my soul like a gun and show it to my friend in the palm of my hand. It’s

To a friend you give yourself away, and you get yourself back bigger and stronger.

A fitted shoe is a right good shoe,” said the old man, enthusiastically. “I’ll fit that shoe to the breadth of a hair.” “And you’ll be all the night about it,” declared the son. “Better a late start than a never ending,” said the father.

A thing half done is a game not won,” said he. “If there’s only one window in the house unlocked the devil may fly through it as easy as if the whole place was open.

But then, there’s a thing that’s harder to watch than a sword or nitroglycerin. It cuts and it tears—a tongue does!

It ain’t every hand that can move as fast as the eye can jump, and faster. But patience climbs the highest hill and—

Don’t you aim to work with iron. Aim to work with men. They’re what need the bendin’. They’re what it pays to shape. Heat ’em and temper ’em. Hammer ’em and form ’em. If you break one of ’em, here and there, it don’t make no difference. Throw the pieces outside the shop. Leave

Proudhon, e.g., thinks that with the sentence “Property is theft” he has at once put a brand on property. In the sense of the priestly, theft is always a crime, or at least a misdeed

This is a short cut to knowing one another,” he explained. “School and college and medical school first, please. Joiner and Vickery are from Groton and Harvard; I’m only from Andover and Yale, so they won’t let me stay in the same room with them; but we can keep the door ajar and get some of the air from the high life, now and then.

Since the days of Bluebeard the Best way of getting a man to do a thing is to tell him not to do it

kept repeating, his glance going blankly past her as he struggled to find words for the strange experience, "but then I saw his ribs going in and out. He was big where the cinches

Brand had ordered Max and Quinn into Quinn’s bedroom. They’d argued they weren’t children. Brand went into the kitchen, grabbed a handful of dry rice, and threw it onto Quinn’s carpet. Then he said that they had to pick up every grain, or he’d beat the shit out of them like the adults they were.

It rises from the funeral pyre of rubble, ash, and scorched memories to stare Max in the eyeballs, stand right over him in his lonely bed and whisper a hissing, fire-branding warning in his dreams, ‘Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust…’ over and over again, so close to his face he can feel the heat emanating from the fiery lick of its tongue. Fireman is trying to tell him something he already knows, but Max doesn’t know it yet. Wake up, damn you! It’s staring you in the face…

It rises from the funeral pyre of rubble, ash and scorched memories to stare Max in the eyeballs, stand right over him in his lonely bed and whisper a hissing, fire-branding warning in his dreams, ‘Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust…’ over and over again, so close to his face he can feel the heat emanating from the fiery lick of its tongue. Fireman is trying to tell him something he already knows, but Max doesn’t know it yet. Wake up, damn you! It’s staring you in the face…

Dan — Whistling Dan,” he said, “I’m seeing you a long, long ways off. Partner, I’m done for.” The whole body of Dan stiffened. “Done? Tex, you can’t be! Five minutes ago you sat at that there table, smilin’ an’ talkin’!” “It doesn’t take five minutes. Half a second can take a man all the way to hell!

Go call him back,” pleaded Joe. “He will stay for your sake.” She whispered: “I would rather call back the wild geese who flew across the moon. And they are only beautiful when they are wild!” “But you’ve lost him, Kate, don’t you understand?” “The wild geese fly north again in spring,” said Buck, “and he’ll—” “Hush!” she said. “Listen!” Far off, above the rushing of the wind, they heard the weird whistling, a thrilling and unearthly music. It was sad with the beauty of the night. It was joyous with the exultation of the wind. It might have been the voice of some god who rode the northern storm south, south after the wild geese, south with the untamed.

Hablando de empresas del sector del automóvil: CarMax es una cadena de concesionarios de coches de segunda mano que dirige la mayor parte de sus actividades de marketing al problema interno a que se enfrenta un cliente cuando busca un coche de segunda mano, que es tener que tratar con un vendedor de coches de segunda mano. Si has estado alguna vez en un concesionario de coches de segunda mano, ya conoces la sensación. Al llegar tienes la impresión de que estás a punto de enfrentarte a un campeón de lucha grecorromana. Conscientes de que sus clientes no quieren regatear el precio ni arriesgarse a comprarse una tartana, la estrategia de negocio de CarMax se orienta a que el cliente no sienta que le mienten, lo engañan o lo avasallan como parte de la experiencia de comprar un coche. Con este objetivo en mente, han creado una especie de acuerdo marco que le garantiza al cliente que el precio que ve en el cartel colocado en el coche es el que pagará al final, y también le informa de que los vendedores de CarMax no cobran comisiones en función del importe de las ventas. En este acuerdo, además, se recalca la importancia del proceso de certificación de calidad e inspección que se realiza para garantizar que todos los coches que venden sean fiables.9 El problema externo que resuelve CarMax es la necesidad de tener coche, claro está, pero apenas hace publicidad sobre coches. Se centra en los problemas internos de sus clientes, y al hacerlo ha conseguido entrar en uno de los sectores de la economía estadounidense que menos confianza inspira y crear una franquicia valorada en 15.000 millones de dólares.

his life. And Moore swears that you rode out

Word's is worse'n bullets. You never know what they'll hit.

Deregulation is in the process of trashing some of the most prestigious brands in the USA, with Boeing being the biggest name so far.

Zane Grey, Max Brand, and Louis L’Amour

I don’t know him. I’m done in. I can’t come,” said Kildare. “Sure, you don’t know half the people that come here yammering to see you,” said the orderly, “but the word’s gone around this precinct that nobody counts except Doctor Kildare.

Reference piece 9.2: How Writing A Book Can Build Your Brand, and 9.3: How to Make Money With Your Book.

The electronics effort faced even greater challenges. To launch that category, David Risher tapped a Dartmouth alum named Chris Payne who had previously worked on Amazon’s DVD store. Like Miller, Payne had to plead with suppliers—in this case, Asian consumer-electronics companies like Sony, Toshiba, and Samsung. He quickly hit a wall. The Japanese electronics giants viewed Internet sellers like Amazon as sketchy discounters. They also had big-box stores like Best Buy and Circuit City whispering in their ears and asking them to take a pass on Amazon. There were middlemen distributors, like Ingram Electronics, but they offered a limited selection. Bezos deployed Doerr to talk to Howard Stringer at Sony America, but he got nowhere. So Payne had to turn to the secondary distributors—jobbers that exist in an unsanctioned, though not illegal, gray market. Randy Miller, a retail finance director who came to Amazon from Eddie Bauer, equates it to buying from the trunk of someone’s car in a dark alley. “It was not a sustainable inventory model, but if you are desperate to have particular products on your site or in your store, you do what you need to do,” he says. Buying through these murky middlemen got Payne and his fledgling electronics team part of the way toward stocking Amazon’s virtual shelves. But Bezos was unimpressed with the selection and grumpily compared it to shopping in a Russian supermarket during the years of Communist rule. It would take Amazon years to generate enough sales to sway the big Asian brands. For now, the electronics store was sparely furnished. Bezos had asked to see $100 million in electronics sales for the 1999 holiday season; Payne and his crew got about two-thirds of the way there. Amazon officially announced the new toy and electronics stores that summer, and in September, the company held a press event at the Sheraton in midtown Manhattan to promote the new categories. Someone had the idea that the tables in the conference room at the Sheraton should have piles of merchandise representing all the new categories, to reinforce the idea of broad selection. Bezos loved it, but when he walked into the room the night before the event, he threw a tantrum: he didn’t think the piles were large enough. “Do you want to hand this business to our competitors?” he barked into his cell phone at his underlings. “This is pathetic!” Harrison Miller, Chris Payne, and their colleagues fanned out that night across Manhattan to various stores, splurging on random products and stuffing them in the trunks of taxicabs. Miller spent a thousand dollars alone at a Toys “R” Us in Herald Square. Payne maxed out his personal credit card and had to call his wife in Seattle to tell her not to use the card for a few days. The piles of products were eventually large enough to satisfy Bezos, but the episode was an early warning. To satisfy customers and their own demanding boss during the upcoming holiday, Amazon executives were going to have to substitute artifice and improvisation for truly comprehensive selection.