It was the autumn of 1996. Jeff Bezos had just raised eight million dollars, putting Amazon’s valuation at around sixty million. Revenue that year was $15.7 million, small yes, but growing at a huge rate and it had caught the attention of two men who’d built an empire out of books the old-fashioned way — Leonard and Stephen Riggio, founders of Barnes & Noble.

Their chain was the heavyweight of American bookselling: hundreds of superstores, nearly two billion dollars in annual sales, and a reputation for crushing smaller rivals.

That autumn, the Riggio brothers invited Jeff Bezos to dinner in New York for what was described as a frank but cordial conversation. They told him they admired what he’d built, acknowledged that Amazon had the early lead online. But, they said plainly, if Barnes & Noble launched its own e-commerce site, their scale and publisher relationships would allow them to “surpass Amazon easily” in both selection and price.

They floated alternatives — a partnership, maybe a strategic alliance, maybe for Bezos to lead Barnes & Noble’s online strategy.

Bezos declined. Steve Riggio left the dinner unconvinced and said after the meeting. “That purely virtual model won’t cut it in the long term.”

Now… to understand how Bezos ended up across the table from the biggest booksellers in America just over a year after setting up Amazon, you have to go back to where it all began.