Wonder Boy

February 15, 2023
A somber rags-to-riches, genius-to-madness story. Tony Hsieh (1973-2020), the founder of Zappos, was a born capitalist, making $200 per month in middle school with a machine that made pin-on badges. A natural introvert, he was committed to overcoming isolation and prejudice, emerging before his Harvard classmates as "a young man who was full of adventure and curiosity and was destined for greater things." Some classmates stayed with him as he launched his first tech firm, a complicated brokerage for internet advertising that was successful enough that he was able to sell it to Microsoft for $265 million. He might have walked away and spent the rest of his life enjoying the wealth. However, as Wall Street Journal reporter Au-Yeung and Forbes investigative reporter Jeans write, Hsieh wanted to do something more, sinking most of his fortune into an endeavor based on the premise that, given the opportunity and the option of easy returns, customers would buy shoes online without trying them on for size. That led to Zappos, "first a customer service-oriented company, a shoe seller second--an ethos its new values set in stone." After Amazon came calling, buying the company for $1.2 billion in 2009, Hsieh spun off into an effort to remake downtown Las Vegas into a business incubator while falling into a cycle of drug and alcohol abuse, shedding old friends and surrounding himself with people who were content to watch his self-destruction as long as they got a piece of the action. Said Hsieh to one old friend who tried to caution him, "If you don't question me again, I'll give you half my net worth." The story has an inevitably tragic end, though the authors offset the self-doomed, mentally ill Hsieh's downward spiral with his generosity and well-intentioned efforts to do well by doing good. A readable, sobering study of entrepreneurial brilliance laid low.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from February 20, 2023
Journalists Au-Yeung and Jeans debut with a nuanced, sympathetic biography of Zappos founder Tony Hsieh, tracing his life from Silicon Valley wunderkind through his spiraling addiction and death in 2020. Hsieh was raised in Northern California by Taiwanese immigrant parents, and from an early age he showed a penchant for moneymaking schemes that included starting his own newspaper while he was in middle school. After a Harvard career marked by intense study and sobriety, he created LinkExchange, which brokered the sale of advertising space on small businesses’ websites, and began partying. The authors cover Hsieh’s founding of Zappos in 1999 and his decision to move the company to Las Vegas and later sell to Amazon, but the most affecting material covers Hsieh’s worsening addictions and mental illness. They suggest Hsieh’s childlike earnestness and desire to be a “man of the people” disintegrated into grandiosity and delusion as he began using ketamine and became insulated from the interventions of friends and family by yes men on his payroll, until he died in a fire at age 46, when the Connecticut storage shed where he’d holed up burned down. Au-Yeung and Jeans’s empathetic portrait is as enthralling as it is achingly sad, combining rich research with a propulsive novelistic style. Readers will have a hard time putting this down.

March 1, 2023
Tony Hsieh was a Harvard-educated venture capitalist at the forefront of innovation at the height of the mid-1990s boom. Authors Au-Yeung and Jeans crafted his life story from 150 interviews and various other materials. This book tells of a boy who, from a young age, was obsessed with making money, becoming a young man who took Silicon Valley by storm. The duo cover his childhood and education, painting a picture of a curious, innovative, and charismatic youth. Hsieh sold his first company to Microsoft at age 23 for $265 million and later took over as CEO of Zappos, where he implemented his famous no-questions-asked return policy. What made Hsieh a standout was his focus on happiness and ensuring that his Zappos employees were satisfied. He even wrote a book, Delivering Happiness, after which he toured as a motivational speaker. Hsieh's life involved so much more, including close friendships, partnerships, and numerous other pursuits until his mysterious and untimely death. Readers will find his story captivating and inspiring. The book will appeal to high-school students, adults, and entrepreneurs.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

June 2, 2023

Wall Street Journal reporter Au-Yeung and Forbes investigative reporter Jeans have written a convincing account of the life and work of the late Tony Hsieh. Based upon the hundreds of interviews they conducted, along with other sources, their book paints a complex picture of Hsieh, best known for his online shoe store Zappos, his effort to revive downtown Las Vegas, and his book, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose, which discusses his distinctive--revolutionary at the time--business philosophy. He believed making employees happy would compel them to make customers happy, who would keep returning for more. As a result, Zappos became one of the most sought-after places in which to get hired. In 2013, Hsieh moved the Zappos headquarters from Henderson, NV, to Las Vegas, where he tried to apply these same principles. This meant, in part, partying hard and using alcohol and drugs. He eventually fell prey to drug addiction, mental illness, and struggling with sleep deprivation and loneliness before his death in 2020. VERDICT Recommended for business collections and to those considering entrepreneurship or applying Hsieh's business philosophy.--Shmuel Ben-Gad

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.