For Jeff Bezos， a New Frontier 杰夫·贝索斯：不按常理出牌的亚马逊总裁.docVIP

For Jeff Bezos， a New Frontier 杰夫·贝索斯：不按常理出牌的亚马逊总裁 　　One summer day as a kid riding in the back seat of his grandparents’ car， the young Jeff Bezos， a natural at math， made a morbid1） calculation. How much was his grandmother’s life expectancy diminished by her cigarette smoking？ As he had heard it， every puff took two minutes or so off your life. Multiply that by the number of puffs per cigarette. Multiply that by the number of cigarettes per day. Divide the minutes to get hours， and then days， and then years. He tapped her on the shoulder. “At two minutes per puff， you’ve taken nine years off your life！” He expected appreciation for his arithmetic. But his grandmother burst into tears and an excruciating2） silence followed. His grandfather pulled the car off the highway. “Jeff， one day you’ll understand that it’s harder to be kind than clever，” he said. 　　The inquisitive child has since become the creator of A， a virtual retail empire built of that same determination and cleverness. He is now a billionaire. Others had thought of selling things online； Bezos perfected the business with attention to low prices， Web site design， a technologically advanced warehouse operation and devoted customer service. 　　In one sense， because of his success， he is a well-known figure. His face has peered out from the cover of national magazines. He has sat for interviews on Charlie Rose3） at least four times. The Harvard Business Review4） has listed him as the best living chief executive. But on August 5th， 2013， the announcement that he was acquiring The Washington Post5） for $250 million invited another level of scrutiny， one that goes well beyond what attends being a business titan. 　　But exactly why he is acquiring The Post—and what he plans to do with it once he owns it—remains mostly a mystery. For now， the best anyone can do to divine his motives is to look at his past. 　　Controversy behind Success 　　What emerges from dozens of interviews with friends and colleagues fr