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Amazon’s Jeff Bezos already built a better bookstore.

This week Bezos is releasing the Amazon Kindle, an electronic device that he hopes will leapfrog over previous attempts at e-readers and become the turning point in a transformation toward Book 2.0.

A startup is betting free coffees and groceries will encourage reluctant recyclers.

“Technology,” computer pioneer Alan Kay once said, “is anything that was invented after you were born.”

“Music and video have been digital for a long time, and short-form reading has been digitized, beginning with the early Web.

But as much as Bezos loves books professionally and personally—he’s a big reader, and his wife is a novelist—he also understands that the surge of technology will engulf all media.

When he sought to make his mark in the nascent days of the Web, he chose to open an online store for books, a decision that led to billionaire status for him, dotcom glory for his company and countless hours wasted by authors checking their Amazon sales ratings.

In a series of essays, Jonathan Alter, Ellis Cose, Raina Kelley and guest contributor Karl Rove explore the complexities of race and class in this campaign.

… there are vibrant pockets of book lovers on the Internet who are waiting for a chance to refurbish the dusty halls of literacy.

11/18/07: Steven Levy reviews Amazon’s new electronic book reader with Internet connectivity.

Now he believes he can improve upon one of humankind’s most divine creations: the book itself.

Some of those features have been available on previous e-book devices, notably the Sony Reader.

Bounding to a whiteboard in the conference room, he ticks off a number of attributes that a book-reading device—yet another computer-powered gadget in an ever more crowded backpack full of them—must have.

The Kindle represents a milestone in a time of transition, when a challenged publishing industry is competing with television, Guitar Hero and time burned on the BlackBerry; literary critics are bemoaning a possible demise of print culture, and Norman Mailer’s recent death underlined the dearth of novelists who cast giant shadows.

So it’s not surprising, when making mental lists of the most whiz-bangy technological creations in our lives, that we may overlook an object that is superbly designed, wickedly functional, infinitely useful and beloved more passionately than any gadget in a Best Buy: the book.

Many people think it is so perfect an invention that it can’t be improved upon, and react with indignation at any implication to the contrary.

E-book devices like the Kindle allow you to change the font size: aging baby boomers will appreciate that every book can instantly be a large-type edition.

A reading device must be sharp and durable, Bezos says, and with the use of E Ink, a breakthrough technology of several years ago that mimes the clarity of a printed book, the Kindle’s six-inch screen posts readable pages.

Plus our top picks for things to buy, rent and do in the coming week.

That’s shorthand for a revolution that will change the way readers read, writers write and publishers publish.

We’re in the former VA hospital that is the physical headquarters for the world’s largest virtual store.

In the parenting corner, don’t sweat it if your kid isn’t an Einstein.

“Books are the last bastion of analog,” he says, in a conference room overlooking the Seattle skyline.

This week: Tips for quitting your full-time job in mid-career.

Plus: Why we put Barack Obama on this week’s cover.

This week, we explore what we’re calling Obama’s Bubba gap—the perception that he’s out of touch with common voters.

As the 2008 campaign officially kicks off, we look at Iowa’s winners and on to New Hampshire and beyond.