How Amazon Is Trying to Outdo Apple: Create More Awe

When he was still in high school, Jeff Bezos designed his own mini summer camp for fourth through sixth graders. Precociously enough, he called it the DREAM Institute, and charged $600 a pop. Bezos was a voracious reader, and the DREAM Institute was to be a boot camp for the mind: in one summer, the younger kids would be required to read The Once and Future King, Stranger in a Strange Land, The Lord of the Rings, Dune, Watership Down, Black Beauty, Gulliver's Travels, Treasure Island, and David Copperfield.

He got six signups

Fast-forward to 2014, when Bezos again sent out prescribed reading — this time, a single slim children's volume called Mr. Pine's Purple House, which Bezos said had been one of his favorite reads as a kid. He got rather more interest this time; the book was received and immediately written up by every news outlet attending Wednesday's mystery Amazon unveiling (including Mashable). Read more...