Wonder Boy

Tony Hsieh, Zappos, and the Myth of Happiness in Silicon Valley

By: Angel Au-Yeung, David Jeans

Narrated by: Kurt Kanazawa

"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.

©2023 Angel Au-Yeung, David Jeans (P)2023 Macmillan Audio

Critic 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

“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*

Must read on drug addiction

Important book to better understand drug addiction and enablement. Definitely wasn’t what I was expecting in a good way

Fascinating, well-written story of a tech legend

Fantastic book. Well written, very well researched, great storytelling. I read an article about Tony’s death soon after he died but all I remember about it was that he died without a will but with contracts written on sticky notes. Glad to know more of his story, from the incredible highs to the heartbreaking lows. An important read, especially for anyone who works in the Silicon Valley / tech / startup ecosystem.

The narration was also fantastic. I gave l my 4 stars because there were some prominent mispronunciations, including of the place where Tony grew up—which was a bit odd since one mispronounced place, Marin County, is fairly well-known. Besides that, it was wonderfully read.

I know I’m going to recommend this book for years and years

Just finished this and damn! Was sucked into Tony’s story on a random Tuesday in a random bookstore in Boston. The first chapter reeled me in, shook my soul and depressed me that day. I could only read that first chapter at that time. Went back home immediately got the Audible version of it. One 13 hour flight and another 3.5 hour flight later I’m done with the book and I want to cry. Tony’s story is heartbreaking and it’s not even fiction and it just happened 3 years ago?! The themes in his story are never ending. The central theme at least for me was how immense wealth, power and money can bring such crushing eternal doom. This man who influenced and changes actual lives could do nothing for himself. It’s so tragic and I want everyone I know and anyone I ever meet to read this.

The need to stay grounded

I really enjoyed the book as the naked account of “what happened”. A lot of lesson learned as the beauty of staying disciplined and grounded in life as well as the change of human behavior in the face of a vast amount of wealth.

Great book that I wish I didn’t listen to …

Great book, great performance, this is how an audiobook should be! I love it and I will love it more if I didn’t have read “the delivery happiness” by Tony Hsieh. Tony has been the Mentor that I followed since I read the book more than 10 years ago, and I was hoping that I would meet him one day. Hearing the news in November 2020, it was devastating. Anyways, I still believe delivery happiness is the purpose, and I will continue to follow what Tony did and envisioned, the before, not the after.

Amazing listen

This book gives some amazing insight into the “Vegas years” of Tony Hsieh. Like a lot of people, I discovered Hsieh’s story when I read Delivering Happiness, and I have reread it a few times over the years. I picked up “Happy at any cost” a few months ago, which was such a contrast to Delivering Happiness, and did a great job of detailing Tony’s drug use and mental health deterioration in Utah. Wonder boy completes the picture, showing the in between time in Las Vegas. I would recommend all three books in order: Delivering Happiness, Wonder Boy and Happy at any cost. Tony lived an extraordinary life and should be remembered for all his successes, and all his troubles.

Well researched and well written.

It feels like you’re taken for a ride into Ton’s fast paced exciting life. I literally knew nothing about Tony until listening to this book. He sounds like a great and brilliant guy. Gone too soon.

Binged over 36 hours

This book was really interesting. Well done, I like the attention to detail, and overall offered perspectives that couldn’t find anywhere else.

Fascinating fall of a successful entrepreneur

Tony had been someone I looked up to as a leader, so I was shocked when I learned of his death in 2020. This book explains what led to his death - some content comes from Tony’s book Delivering Happiness, so you might find it redundant, but overall it was a fascinating story to listen to. I finished it in 3 days!

Heartbreaking story

A well researched book. Heartbreaking stories… I had no idea his mental health challenges. It’s painful to hear how many people took advantage of him and the situation.