Since readers of this magazine are not likely to be among the roughly 14 percent of Americans who actively buy and sell stocks, you may not be familiar with the spring ritual that is the CEO’s Letter to Shareholders. And if you are aware of the genre, you may be forgiven for never having paid much mind to what is, almost by definition, an exercise in cheerful banality; according to one recent survey, indeed, a mere 3 percent of CEO letters qualify as “worth reading.”

One of the handful of executives who fall into this small category is Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, whose annual musings have since 1997 consistently bucked the norm, so much so that business and thought leaders around the world have long mined his letters not only for actionable intelligence on Amazon’s prospects, but even more so for the gnomic bits of managerial and entrepreneurial wisdom he so generously dispenses.

Expectations for his most recent letter, issued on April 15, were unusually high. On the one hand the COVID-19 crisis and the recent union drive in Bessemer had brought extraordinary scrutiny down upon the company’s labor practices, and on the other, just as importantly, the 2021 edition would be his last, given his announced plans to step down as CEO, effective July 5. That Bezos does not disappoint is rather an understatement, for in this remarkable document we are provided with a rare glimpse into the recesses of the mind of this singular figure who has done so much to shape the world we inhabit.