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Sign up todayWonder Boy
Tony Hsieh, Zappos, and the Myth of Happiness in Silicon Valley
Narrator
Kurt Kanazawa
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Length
11 hours 58 minutes
Language
English
Bookseller recommendation
“This is the story about the brilliant tech entrepreneur Tony Shieh, best known as the CEO of Zappos.com, who sold his first company to Microsoft at the age of 24 and later embarked on using his riches to revitalize a portion of downtown Las Vegas. It’s a gripping tale of his successes and rise to fame that turned into increasing use of various drugs and a descent into what can only be described as madness. ”
— Anne • Newtonville Books
"Kurt Kanazawa presents this absorbing story of the initial success and later downward spiral of Tony Hsieh, tech founder and former CEO of Zappos. Kanazawa's youthful tone and vocal energy connect with Hsieh's wealth and celebrity status without glossing over his descent into drugs, alcohol, and mental health problems."-- AudioFile
Wonder Boy is a riveting investigation into the turbulent life of Zappos visionary Tony Hsieh, whose radical business strategies revolutionized both the tech world and corporate culture, based on rigorous research and reporting by two seasoned journalists.
Tony Hsieh’s first successful venture was in middle school, selling personalized buttons. At Harvard, he made a profit compiling and selling study guides. In 1998, Hsieh sold his first company to Microsoft for $265 million. About a decade later, he sold online shoe empire Zappos to Amazon for $1.2 billion.
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 became one of the hardest companies to get hired at, and CEOs from other companies regularly toured the headquarters. But Hsieh’s vision for change didn’t stop with corporate culture: Hsieh went on to move Zappos headquarters to Las Vegas and personally funded a nine-figure campaign to revitalize the city’s historic downtown area. There, he could be found living in an Airstream and chatting up the locals. But Hsieh’s forays into community-revival projects spun out of control as his issues with mental health and addiction ramped up, creating the opportunity for more enablers than friends to stand in his mercurial good graces.
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 the pressure to succeed but who never lost his generous spirit.
A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt & Company.
Angel Au-Yeung, co-author of Wonder Boy, is a reporter for the Wall Street Journal and a former staff writer for Forbes. She was born in Hong Kong and grew up in California, the youngest of three sisters. She attended UC San Diego for her undergraduate studies as a cognitive neuroscience major and Columbia University for her graduate degree in journalism. She currently lives in San Francisco.
David Jeans, co-author of Wonder Boy, is an investigative reporter for Forbes, where he covers the tech industry. He holds a master’s degree from Columbia Journalism School and has reported for the Associated Press, the New York Times, and other publications. He grew up in Melbourne, Australia, and lives in New York City.
Reviews
“In Wonder Boy, Angel Au-Yeung and David Jeans have delivered a heartbreaking and extraordinary account of a heartbreaking and extraordinary man. Tony Hsieh was an innovative business leader, but he was also frenetic, generous, difficult, and tormented. His rise and fall is a quintessential American tragedy—one that their thorough reporting captures movingly.”
—Max Chafkin, author of The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power
“Wonder Boy is a captivating story about the combustible mixture of genius, ambition, ego, empathy, wealth and intoxicants in the turbocharged environment of the technology elite. Au-Yeung and Jeans bring us deep inside the world of Tony Hsieh in a way that is both revelatory and entertaining.”
—Alec Ross, author of The Raging 2020s
“Wonder Boy is so much more than a biography. Sure, it tells the story of Tony Hseih’s life, but it’s full of lessons for anyone interested in psychology, business, or social dynamics. Angel Au-Yeung and David Jeans approach their subject as investigative reporters, yet they remain full of empathy and compassion.”
—Dan Alexander, author of White House, Inc.: How Donald Trump Turned the Presidency into a Business
“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.”
—Publishers Weekly, *starred review*
“A somber rags-to-riches, genius-to-madness story…of entrepreneurial brilliance laid low.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Authors Au-Yeung and Jeans crafted [Tony Hsieh’s] 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…until his mysterious and untimely death. Readers will find his story captivating and inspiring.”
—Booklist
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