The Kingdom of Happiness: Inside Tony Hsieh’s Zapponian Utopia

Zappos founder Tony Hsieh made quite a splash with Delivering Happiness, his 2010 bestselling business book; unfortunately, journalist Groth’s efforts to replicate that success with this account of the storied, quirky company don’t quite hit the mark. Hsieh, widely portrayed as enthusiastic and visionary, is almost mythical in the business world. Zappos has its origins in the halls of Harvard, where Hsieh met Alfred Lin, another child of immigrant parents with high expectations; their early company, Venture Frogs, bought Drugs.com. Groth begins with the launch of famously employee-friendly Zappos, with a startup culture that includes happy hours, office parades, and a unique hiring process. From there she moves on to the business’s success as well as its challenges, the latter including the hugely ambitious but destructive Downtown Project, an attempt at urban revival for Zappos’s homebase of Las Vegas. The book is likely of interest to any die-hard Zappos devotees, but it’s unclear why this book is needed now, or why the author—who takes pains to insert herself as a character in the story—left Business Insider and moved to Vegas to write it. Her work is interesting enough as a case study, but adds little to the genre. (Feb.)