Book
Wonder boy : Tony Hsieh, Zappos, and the myth of happiness in Silicon Valley
Edition
First edition.
Publication Information
New York, New York : Henry Holt and Company, 2023.
Physical Description
xxiv, 356 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map ; 25 cm
Summary
"Tony Hsieh revolutionized both the tech world and corporate culture. He was a business visionary. He was also a man in search of happiness. So why did it all go so wrong? Tony Hsieh's first successful venture was in middle school, selling personalized buttons. At Harvard, he made a profit compiling and selling study guides. From there, he went on to build the billion-dollar online shoe empire of Zappos. The secret to his success? Making his employees happy. At its peak, Zappos's employee-friendly culture was so famous across the tech industry that it inspired copycats and earned a cult following. Then Hsieh moved the Zappos headquarters to Las Vegas, where he personally funded a nine-figure campaign to revitalize the city's historic downtown area. But as Hsieh fell deeper into his struggles with mental health and drug addiction, the people making up his inner circle began changing from friends to enablers. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with a wide range of people whose lives Hsieh touched, journalists Angel Au-Yeung and David Jeans craft a rich portrait of a man who was plagued by his eternal search for happiness and ultimately succumbed to his own demons"--Dust jacket flap.
Contents
- Prologue
- The golden child
- Wide awake
- The bet
- LinkExchange
- Raving
- The shoe guy
- The trifecta
- Delivering happiness
- The new project
- The desert tech utopia --Life is beautiful --The Darwinian perspective
- Andy
- Trouble in paradise
- "The mayor of downtown Las Vegas"
- The island
- The trailer park
- The right hand
- Genie in a bottle
- Winter camp
- Flow state
- The Gordian knot
- Sticky notes
- Old friends and new
- Who will save your soul?
- On the edge of the ether-world
- Blizzy
- Thanksgiving
- The aftermath
- Epilogue.