Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Kingdom of Happiness
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Brooklyn
STATE: NY
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Aimee-Groth/553696558 * https://www.linkedin.com/in/aimee-groth-37bb6818/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.:
n 2017000582
LCCN Permalink:
https://lccn.loc.gov/n2017000582
HEADING:
Groth, Aimee
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PERSONAL
Female.
EDUCATION:Graduated from University of St. Thomas.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, editor, and business journalist. Writer for Quartz, a news website published by Atlantic Media Company. Business Insider, former senior editor. Minnesota Monthly and Midwest Home, advertising writer; Business Journal, feature story and profile writer; Sun Newspapers, features writer; Aquin, general assignment reporter.
WRITINGS
Business Insider, former senior editor; Minnesota Law & Politics, former editor; editor of legal magazines at Thomson Reuters.
SIDELIGHTS
Aimee Groth is a business journalist, technology writer, and editor. As an independent business journalist, she writes frequently for Quartz, a global news website with a focus on international business. Previously, she was senior editor for the magazine Business Insider, an editor for Minnesota Law & Politics magazine and for a legal magazine published by Thomson Reuters.
In The Kingdom of Happiness: Inside Tony Hsieh’s Zapponian Utopia, Groth recounts a four-year stint covering the interior workings of Zappos, a highly successful online shoe retailer, and the business and philanthropic projects undertaken by the company’s founder, Tony Hsieh. In particular, Groth writes about Hsieh’s Downtown Project, an initiative he funded from his own personal fortune and which sought to “build business and community in a section of Las Vegas that had long been written off as a place for petty crime and the homeless,” noted Joe Schoenmann on the Nevada Public Radio/KNPR website.
Groth writes extensively about the corporate culture at Zappos. The company is widely known for its unwavering dedication to customer service and its philosophy that satisfied customers are the best form of marketing available. Zappos also has a reputation for a unique corporate structure and employee culture. Almost equal to the company’s commitment to customer service is its position that happy employees are productive employees, and the company goes to great lengths to ensure that employees are well trained, given opportunities for recreation and advancement, and are allowed significant autonomy in how they conduct their daily business. At one time, the company even practiced holacracy, a decentralized management style that “rids a company of hierarchy and titles, and instead creates an all-for-one do-what-you-want mentality,” observed New York Times contributor Nick Bilton.
The major portion of The Kingdom of Happiness is devoted to Hsieh’s Downtown Project and its multiple successes and failures in creating a new urban business and community environment. Hsieh spent some 350 million dollars of his own money on the project, an indicator of his belief in its business value and social worthiness. In her reporting on the Downtown Project, Groth became deeply immersed in the business and personal life of Hsieh. “With Hsieh’s encouragement, journalist Aimee Groth spent more than four years following the project, enjoying access to Hsieh and his lieutenants and confidants, and the employees and aspiring entrepreneurs who became part of it,” noted John Przybys, writing in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “Where Groth succeeds is by bringing you along on her journey to understand the world she’s documenting,” Bilton commented.
Groth describes the Downtown Project in detail while also reporting on the social aspects Hsieh and his team injected, such as the desire to build a community in the downtown Las Vegas area as much as a business center. She reports on how the corporate culture of Zappos, and Hsieh’s personality, affected the project. She provides information on businesses that succeed, and others that failed, and how the project ultimately did not live up to its lofty goals. Still, she reports, the attempt was noble and not without merit, and Hsieh deserves substantial “credit for his willingness to take on the project in the first place,” Przybys stated.
The “Downtown Project hasn’t disappeared, however. It owns some sixty acres of property downtown and is actively working on developing that acreage,” Schoenmann reported. Housing is a major part of that development. Meanwhile, the project continues to address issues that have affected the businesses that have come and gone over its lifespan.
“This sprawling journalistic account is stronger on narrative than on drawing lessons,” remarked Schmuel Ben-Gad, writing in Library Journal. A Publishers Weekly reviewer observed that Groth’s “work is interesting enough as a case study” of a corporation, a corporate personality, and a large-scale urban revitalization project. A Kirkus Reviews contributor called Groth’s book an “intriguing business/sociological chronicle with wider implications for modern corporate practices.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, December 15, 2016, review of The Kingdom of Happiness.
Las Vegas Review Journal, August 2, 2017, John Przybys, “A Peek inside the Downtown Project with Aimee Groth.”
Library Journal, February 1, 2017, Shmuel Ben-Gad, review of The Kingdom of Happiness: Inside Tony Hsieh’s Zapponian Utopia, p. 89.
New York Times Book Review, February 14, 2017, Nick Bilton, “Pet Projects of the New Billionaires,” review of The Kingdom of Happiness.
Publishers Weekly, November 28, 2016, review of The Kingdom of Happiness, p. 60.
ONLINE
Business Insider Website, http://www.businessindier.com/ (August 29, 2017), biography of Aimee Groth.
Bustler, http://www.bustler.net/ (April 3, 2017), “Manufacturing Happiness: A Talk with Aimee Groth and Her Time inside the Zappos Utopia.”
Kingdom of Happiness Website, http://www.thekingdomofhappiness.com (August 29, 2017).
Las Vegas Weekly, https://lasvegasweekly.com (March 2, 2017), review of The Kingdom of Happiness.
Nevada Public Radio/KNPR Website, http://www.knpr.org/ (February 21, 2017), Joe Schoenmann, “Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project: A Utopia for Some?,” interview with Aimee Groth.
NewsSouth, http://courseweb.stthomas.edu/newssouth/2006/site/index.html (August 29, 2017), Laurence Farah, biography of Aimee Groth.
Simon & Schuster Website, http://www.simonandschuster.com/ (August 29, 2017), biography of Aimee Groth.
Aimee Groth
Aimee Groth is a former Senior Editor of Business Insider who oversaw the Strategy and Careers verticals. She joined Business Insider from Thomson Reuters in Minneapolis, where she was an associate editor for one of its legal magazines. Previously she worked for Minnesota Law & Politics magazine.
Aimee Groth
Aimee Groth is an independent business journalist who writes primarily for Quartz, a division of Atlantic Media Company. She previously served as a senior editor at Business Insider. Her work has been highlighted by several publications, including The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and the Harvard Business Review. In December 2013 she broke the news about Zappos’s adoption of Holacracy, which led to coverage by dozens of news organizations around the world, including CNN and The New York Times.
Aimee Groth is an independent business journalist who writes primarily for Quartz, a division of Atlantic Media Company. She previously served as a senior editor at Business Insider. Her work has been highlighted by several publications, including The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and the Harvard Business Review. In December 2013 she broke the news about Zappos’s adoption of Holacracy, which led to coverage by dozens of news organizations around the world, including CNN and The New York Times.
====
In 2010 Tony Hsieh was introduced to many as a visionary modern business leader. Under Hsieh’s leadership, Zappos became the world’s largest online shoe company by championing satisfied customers and a valued workforce. After his company was purchased by Amazon, even as he continued as its CEO, Hsieh engaged his energies and considerable fortune toward a much larger goal: building a new and more socially conscious Silicon Valley in the heart of downtown Las Vegas, all within his five-year plan.
Hsieh challenged business and technology journalist Aimee Groth to uproot her life and participate in his social engineering experiment. Beginning with couch surfing, moving to a Downtown Project crash pad, and then living in Zappos corporate housing above the Gold Spike bar, Groth had a front-row view of Hsieh’s efforts to build his ideal society.
With interviews from insiders on all ends of the Zappos spectrum—like the “broken dolls” who gravitate toward Hsieh’s almost cultlike personality and make up some of his inner circle, to the Zapponians who live and work on campus, to players in the top echelon of Silicon Valley—Groth offers a unique view of a world few people know much about, and sheds a new light on this complex, eccentric man.
The Kingdom of Happiness is the story of one man’s quest to create his own nirvana in the desert based on his exacting design and experimentation with lessons he’s gleaned not only from the incredible success of Zappos, but also from rave culture and Burning Man. Is it the business model of the future or a cautionary tale of hubris?
Wednesday, August 2, 2017
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Posted February 25, 2017 - 2:04pmUpdated February 26, 2017 - 12:02pm
A peek inside the Downtown Project with Aimee Groth
Author Aimee Groth on how Tony Hsieh's Downtown Project fell short (John Przybys/Las Vegas Review-Journal)imgJournalist Aimee Groth, author of The Kingdom of Happiness: Inside Tony Hsieh’s Zapponian Utopia, in downtown Las Vegas on Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2017. (Erik Verduzco/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @Erik_VerduzcoimgJournalist Aimee Groth, author of The Kingdom of Happiness: Inside Tony Hsieh’s Zapponian Utopia, in downtown Las Vegas on Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2017. (Erik Verduzco/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @Erik_VerduzcoimgJacket of Aimee Groth's book, "The Kingdom of Happiness: Inside Tony Hsieh's Zapponian Utopia." ( Courtesy Touchstone/Simon & Schuster Inc. Jacket design by Pete Garceau. Jacket photograph by iStock/Getty Images)imgAimee Groth, author of "The Kingdom of Happiness: Inside Tony Hsieh's Zapponian Utopia." (Kristin Vogt)imgJournalist Aimee Groth, author of The Kingdom of Happiness: Inside Tony Hsieh’s Zapponian Utopia, in downtown Las Vegas on Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2017. (Erik Verduzco/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @Erik_VerduzcoimgJournalist Aimee Groth, author of The Kingdom of Happiness: Inside Tony Hsieh’s Zapponian Utopia, in downtown Las Vegas on Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2017. (Erik Verduzco/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @Erik_VerduzcoimgJournalist Aimee Groth, author of The Kingdom of Happiness: Inside Tony Hsieh’s Zapponian Utopia, in downtown Las Vegas on Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2017. (Erik Verduzco/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @Erik_VerduzcoimgJournalist Aimee Groth, author of The Kingdom of Happiness: Inside Tony Hsieh’s Zapponian Utopia, in downtown Las Vegas on Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2017. (Erik Verduzco/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @Erik_VerduzcoimgJournalist Aimee Groth, author of The Kingdom of Happiness: Inside Tony Hsieh’s Zapponian Utopia, in downtown Las Vegas on Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2017. (Erik Verduzco/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @Erik_Verduzco
By JOHN PRZYBYS
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
It was an audacious goal by any measure: to revitalize downtown Las Vegas in a new way, using new principles, all in just five years’ time.
Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, invested a reported $350 million into the Downtown Project, which sought to revitalize and create a sense of community in downtown Las Vegas. With Hsieh’s encouragement, journalist Aimee Groth spent more than four years following the project, enjoying access to Hsieh and his lieutenants and confidants, and the employees and aspiring entrepreneurs who became part of it.
Groth tells her story in “The Kingdom of Happiness: Inside Tony Hsieh’s Zapponian Utopia” (Touchstone, $27). Though she judges the Downtown Project as unsuccessful — relative to the heights that it had aspired to, anyway — and even disillusioning, she gives Hsieh credit for his willingness to take on the project in the first place.
Groth calls her book the product of “an evolution, from someone who just really bought into it and then turned into more of a skeptic.”
MORE THAN BUSINESS
“I see it partially as a memoir,” Groth said of her book. “I mean, it could be filed under psychology or sociology. I think it crosses genres.”
She started reporting on the Downtown Project in 2013
at age 29.
“I was always drawn to the psychology. That was the most interesting aspect to me,” she said. “Unlike other (reporters) that came through the downtown, I never saw this as an urban planning experience, or that it should be measured against other urban planning experiences. I thought of it as a social experience first.”
“The Kingdom of Happiness” covers Zappos’ adoption of holacracy, or jettisoning a traditional corporate hierarchy in favor of self-organization. There are stories of downtown business owners whose ventures survived and failed, and stories of what happened to utopia-seeking dreamers when utopia wasn’t realized.
And there’s Hsieh. “I think that he went into this project with good intentions,” she said. “I think that he’s never experienced failure in his life until now, so I’ll be very curious to see what he does with it over the next few years.”
A spokeswoman for the Downtown Project said last week that Hsieh was out of the country and unable to be interviewed. However, the Downtown Project released a statement: “Several Zappos employees, including Tony, have reviewed the book and have collectively noted well over 100 pages that we believe contain inaccuracies, misrepresentations, or flat out false statements throughout the final version. As a result, the book is not representative of Zappos or Tony or many others mentioned in the book, and is not officially endorsed by the company.”
THE OUTCOME
Although the Downtown Project hasn’t met the lofty aims voiced at its outset, Groth gives credit to Hsieh for what he has been able to do.
“I think that if you walk downtown you’ll see that the area has improved. I would say there has been an upgrade,” she said.
Owners of businesses that received financial support from the project “got an opportunity they never would have gotten in terms of investment money,” Groth added. “And a lot of people got a lot of life experience.”
Meanwhile, “I know there are other cities that are in touch with the Downtown Project,” seeking to learn lessons from it, she said. “So I think it’s an ongoing conversation, and I’d be very interested to see what happens five years from now,” Groth said. “Maybe they’ll accomplish their mission in 10 years.”
And, from a broader, more personal perspective, Groth said, “the book is about pursuing your dream, really. Everyone comes to Las Vegas to pursue a dream. My dream was to write this book.”
Contact John Przybys at jprzybys@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0280. Follow @JJPrzybys on Twitter.
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Join us for this discussion with author Aimee Groth as she celebrates the launch of her new book Kingdom of Happiness, detailing her time spent embedded within Zappos CEO's Tony Hsieh's imagined utopia in downtown Las Vegas. Aimee will be interviewed by Fast Company columnist Greg Lindsay. This talk will discuss the entrepreneurial utopia created by Tony Hsieh in Las Vegas, and whether or not such utopias can actually be manufactured, and how things went awry in Vegas.
Featuring:
Aimee Groth, author, The Kingdom of Happiness: Inside Tony Hsieh's Zapponian Utopia
Greg Lindsay, journalist
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Tony Hsieh's Downtown Project: A Utopia For Some?
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Feb 21, 2017byJoe Schoenmann
Tony Hsieh’s downtown project took Las Vegas by storm five years ago.
Dipping into his personal fortune, he poured $350 million into what remains a novel idea: redeveloping Las Vegas’ downtown’s urban core.
But not simply by creating new business.
What inspired the city and became a public relations tsunami was Hsieh’s plan to foster “community” — that rarest of commodities in Las Vegas — even at the expensive of profit.
He called it the Downtown Project.
Almost from the beginning, Aimee Groth was there. She’s a tech business writer and has a new book out called “The Kingdom Of Happiness: Inside Tony Hsieh’s Zapponian Utopia.”
Groth's book provides insight into a whirlwind attempt to build business and community in a section of Las Vegas that had long been written off as a place for petty crime and the homeless.
In respone to the book, Zappos issued a statement to KNPR's State of Nevada:
"Several Zappos employees, including Tony, have reviewed the book and have collectively noted well over 100 pages that we believe contain inaccuracies, misrepresentations, or flat out false statements throughout the final version. As a result, the book is not a representation of Zappos or Tony or many others mentioned in the book, and is not officially endorsed by the company."
Support comes from
Groth, though, said she came to Hsieh's Downtown Project as an admirer, sold on his community vision.
And she got access to the Project's inner workings. She traveled with Hsieh, stayed in one of his condos in The Ogden high-rise. She went to their parties.
In fact, the first version of her book, she admitted, was fluff. Book publishers rejected it.
"I really believed in Tony's vision and I wanted it to come to fruition," Groth said in an interview on KNPR's State of Nevada.
She rewrote the book, giving it what she said is a more "realistic" twist. But Groth insisted this was not to get the approval of a publisher. Instead, by the time she started the rewrite, she added, Hsieh's Downtown Project was experiencing some failures.
Businesses started, then disappeared. When that happened, Downtown Project said it was in part expected -- especially in the Container Park at Fremont and 7th streets.
But there were also three suicides with people associated with Downtown Project. Groth said instead of strongly addressing those deaths, Downtown Project worried more about how the deaths would affect its image.
After a few years, the tenet "return on community," was dropped also from Downtown Project's mission statement.
"So many people (inside DTP) were highly disappointed and sad" when that happened, Groth said.
Downtown Project hasn't disappeared, however. It owns some 60 acres of property downtown and is actively working on developing that acreage. One of its biggest projects is a multi-story apartment building near 9th and Fremont streets. Hsieh had told journalists in 2016 that in hindsight, DTP might have been better off building housing earlier. Many former business operators have cited the lack of foot traffic and population density as factors that contributed to the closure of their businesses.
Some of that is still happening.
Announced earlier this year, the DTP-funded health care provider, Turntable Health, closed its doors. And roughly an hour after Groth talked to "KNPR's State of Nevada," Zydeco Po-Boys, a restaurant in DTP's building at 6th and Carson, announced it would be closing.
Guests: Aimee Groth, author, "The Kingdom of Happiness: Inside Tony Hsieh's Zapponian Utopia"
More from: Civic Life, Nevada & the Southwest, aimee groth, downtown project, tony hsieh, KNPR's State of Nevada
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Profile of Aimee Groth
By Laurence Farah
Aimée Groth loves Gummi Bears, but she also likes to write. She declared print journalism her major during her freshmen year at the University of St. Thomas. "Since high school, I have always envisioned working at a magazine," she said. "That was my motive for studying print journalism."
Now in her senior year at St. Thomas, Groth works for Minnesota Monthly and Midwest Home magazines, writing special advertising. For The Business Journal, she wrote feature stories and profiles. At Sun Newspapers, she wrote features and covered city meetings. Her first journalistic experience was at The Aquin where she wrote in a variety of areas including variety, sports and opinion.
Groth spent last fall in London and touring Europe for a business semester because she is also a business minor. Her stops included Switzerland, Belgium, France, Italy, Scotland, Spain and Holland.
Groth′s favorite reads include the Star Tribune, New York Times, Elle, Vanity Fair, Time and Self. She enjoys running and playing the piano. She is passionate about her music &edash; writing and playing it. She has produced her own CD, but she plans to compose and produce her next one.
After graduation, Groth plans to explore the opportunities that the journalism world has to offer. "Some day I hope to live and work in New York City," she said. Her recent journalism experiences have opened her eyes to the various jobs in the field, but she still hopes to work for a premier variety magazine writing about such topics as arts and culture, health, music, fashion or entertainment.
Read stories by Aimee
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Print Marked Items
Groth, Aimee. The Kingdom of Happiness: Inside Tony Hsieh's Zapponian Utopia
Shmuel Ben-Gad
Library Journal.
142.2 (Feb. 1, 2017): p89. From Book Review Index Plus.
COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Groth, Aimee. The Kingdom of Happiness: Inside Tony Hsieh's Zapponian Utopia. Touchstone. Feb. 2017.320p. notes, index. ISBN 9781501129902. $27; ebk. ISBN 9781501129926. BUS
Groth was formerly a reporter at Business Insider, and this book relates her leaving that position to devote herself to covering Tony Hsieh's attempt at urban revitalization in downtown Las Vegas to create a "community-focused city." Hsieh is the founder of the online shoe retailer Zappos. The Zappos corporate culture encourages work-life integration and creates a zany atmosphere including employee parades and hard partying. Hsieh wrote a book about his management philosophy, Delivering Happiness, which the talks he delivers are based upon. Groth was quite attracted to Hsieh's efforts. She interviewed Hsieh and experienced the rave culture that has influenced him. He comes across as a contradictory combination of a quiet demeanor, grandiose ambitions, and a lifestyle of excess. The author got to know many people connected to Hsieh, both true believers and skeptics. By the end of her book, Groth is more of a skeptic than not, but still attracted to Hsieh's vision to a degree. VERDICT This sprawling journalistic account is stronger on narrative than on drawing lessons. Its primary audience is likely to be those intrigued by Hsieh and the type of corporate culture he advocates.--Shmuel Ben-Gad, Gelman Lib., George Washington Univ., Washington, DC
Ben-Gad, Shmuel
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Ben-Gad, Shmuel. "Groth, Aimee. The Kingdom of Happiness: Inside Tony Hsieh's Zapponian Utopia." Library
Journal, 1 Feb. 2017, p. 89. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA479301277&it=r&asid=aced3e1e6d167e48ca7e81df4e1821f8. Accessed 7 Aug. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A479301277
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Groth, Aimee: THE KINGDOM OF HAPPINESS
Kirkus Reviews.
(Dec. 15, 2016): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Groth, Aimee THE KINGDOM OF HAPPINESS Touchstone/Simon & Schuster (Adult Nonfiction) $27.00 2, 21 ISBN: 978-1-5011-2990-2
An investigation into the social experiments at the corporate headquarters of Zappos that raises some important questions about entrepreneurship, business management methods, and human values. In 2013, journalist Groth, a freelancer who writes often for global business news publication Quartz, triggered a firestorm of publicity when she reported that the company's CEO, Tony Hsieh, had decided to completely reorganize the company as a holocracy, which "eliminates job titles and abandons traditional hierarchy. The ultimate goal is self-organization." Working as a senior editor at Business Insider, the author was on the scene as the adoption and implementation of the holocracy occurred, resulting in a management shakedown, employee discontent, and numerous layoffs. Groth traces the prehistory of a company that, from the beginning, prided itself on a quirky insistence that culture and fun ruled over mere profit. Hsieh adopted holocracy expecting to develop a common language that would unite the different components of his empire. However, it was much rockier than he expected, and Groth explores the shortcomings of the attempt. The culture of Zappos was organized around the slogan, "Delivering Happiness." Similar concepts have been adopted by countless digital-age tech companies and have resulted in corporations beginning "to take on the task of managing the emotional well-being of [their] employees." In the case of Zappos, the author identifies a group therapy-like tendency to psychologize, even at the company's mass meetings. She writes that the practice sharply contrasts with that of some of Silicon Valley's best investors, who are "investing in someone's career...over the span of decades." Consequently, there is "a subtle backlash emerging around the cult of the entrepreneur." Groth's investigation led to the conclusion that the Zappos organization has become quite cultlike; whether that was caused by holacracy or Hsieh's personal foibles remains undetermined. An intriguing business/sociological chronicle with wider implications for modern corporate practices.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Groth, Aimee: THE KINGDOM OF HAPPINESS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Dec. 2016. PowerSearch,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA473652252&it=r&asid=19ea3f32c380a676c7281f297c99b931. Accessed 7 Aug. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A473652252
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8/7/17, 4(31 PM
The Kingdom of Happiness: Inside Tony Hsieh's Zapponian Utopia
Publishers Weekly.
263.48 (Nov. 28, 2016): p60. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Kingdom of Happiness: Inside Tony Hsieh's Zapponian Utopia Aimee Groth. Touchstone, $27 (320p) ISBN 978-1-5011-2990-2
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.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Kingdom of Happiness: Inside Tony Hsieh's Zapponian Utopia." Publishers Weekly, 28 Nov. 2016, p. 60.
PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA473149948&it=r&asid=139d88cffbabb257d9d9913b5dde9611. Accessed 7 Aug. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A473149948
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BOOK REVIEW | NONFICTION
Pet Projects of the New Billionaires
By NICK BILTONFEB. 14, 2017
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Peter Thiel, venture capitalist. Credit Andrew White for The New York Times
VALLEY OF THE GODS
A Silicon Valley Story
By Alexandra Wolfe
261 pp. Simon & Schuster. $27.
THE KINGDOM OF HAPPINESS
Inside Tony Hsieh’s Zapponian Utopia
By Aimee Groth
318 pp. Touchstone. $27.
As I sat down for lunch at a restaurant in Los Angeles, I placed a copy of “Valley of the Gods,” by Alexandra Wolfe, on the table, and a waitress walking by stopped to peer at the cover. “Oh, that looks like an interesting book,” she said. “What’s it about?”
“It’s about Silicon Valley,” I began. “It follows this young kid, John Burnham, who gets paid $100,000 by this weird billionaire guy, Peter Thiel, whom you’ve probably heard of; he’s a big Trump supporter and spoke at the Republican National Convention?” — a blank stare from the waitress. “Anyway, Thiel pays him (and a bunch of other kids) to forgo college so Burnham can mine asteroids, but he doesn’t actually end up mining the asteroids and. . . .”
“Oh, I thought it was a nonfiction book,” the waitress interrupted with a perplexed and awkward look on her face.
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Alexandra Wolfe
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“Oh,” I replied. “Believe it or not, it is.”
She scampered away, unsure she wanted to hear more. At times while reading the book, I wish I could have done the same thing.
Over the last couple of decades there has been a lot of ink spilled about Silicon Valley, which ironically has helped disembowel most ink-spilling businesses. Lewis, Stone, Swisher, Bronson, Losse, Isaacson and yours truly have all tried to take hoi polloi on a written tour of that peculiar area south of San Francisco, whisking them around like Midwesterners in a celebrity-tour van in Beverly Hills.
Now, we have two more to add to the collection: the aforementioned book by Wolfe, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and “The Kingdom of Happiness,” by Aimee Groth, a contributor to Quartz — both of which are about tech culture.
Photo
Tony Hsieh, chief executive of Zappos. Credit Brad Swonetz for The New York Times
Wolfe’s writing doesn’t differ much from those who came before her in this regard. She’s informative and has spoken with lots and lots of people up and down the peninsula. But unlike (most) others who come to the Valley with heaps of skepticism, Wolfe instead treats that plot of earth as if it’s mystical and magical, worthy of a place in history and something akin to the Greek odes to Aphrodite and Dionysus. But gods the nerds are not.
The book begins with the protagonist, Burnham (or antagonist, depending whose side you’re on), who isn’t old enough to drink yet but is debating dropping out of college to follow the Pied Piper of libertarian and contrarian thinking, Peter Thiel, to Silicon Valley. As Wolfe chronicles, Thiel, who has a degree from Stanford University and largely credits where he is today (a billionaire) to his time at that school, started the Thiel Fellowship, in 2011, which awards $100,000 to 20 people under 20 years old to say no to M.I.T., Stanford or, in Burnham’s case, the University of Massachusetts, to pursue an Ayn Randian dream of disrupting archetypal norms.
It won’t be giving away the ending by pointing out that it doesn’t end well for Burnham.
Wolfe’s writing can oscillate between graciously beautiful and being almost too explicative. (I didn’t need to know the name of everyone she met along her journey, but I feel as if I did.) But when her storytelling works, it works well. In one paragraph, she seems to channel Steve Irwin as he slinks up on a feral critter in the woods, talking about these strange men and women who live in the Valley and what drives them. (Changing the world, Wolfe assures us.) In another paragraph, it feels as if she’s trying to channel Robin Leach while he strolls through a gold-encrusted living room, as she talks about the insane amount of money in Silicon Valley. (Wait, I thought they were just trying to change the world?)
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Where I found myself getting frustrated was with Wolfe’s decision to omit facts that don’t fit that particular part of the story. For example, when we first meet Thiel, he is lauded as a genius who made billions on companies like Spotify and Lyft and started his own hedge fund, Clarium Capital. Yes. This is all true. But Wolfe fails to note that Clarium faltered badly with misplaced bets during the Great Recession, or that his support for Donald Trump has made him largely persona non grata in Silicon Valley.
While Wolfe is a fly on the wall in her book, writing as if she is documenting history, Groth places herself smack in the center of her book and, while there, is often blissfully inebriated.
“The Kingdom of Happiness” doesn’t take place in Silicon Valley per se, but it is definitively about tech culture. Groth follows Tony Hsieh, the creator of Zappos, as he pours $350 million of his personal wealth into downtown Las Vegas with the goal of reinventing the area as a blissful business utopia. I won’t be giving away the story by pointing out that it doesn’t end well for Hsieh, either.
Where Groth succeeds is by bringing you along on her journey to understand the world she’s documenting. Where she fails is that she brings you along on every single painful, tedious moment of that journey.
One evening while partying with Hsieh she gets blackout drunk on vodka and ends up being dropped off at a hospital (rather than home) by an altruistic cabdriver who is concerned she has alcohol poisoning. Groth rides bikes around Burning Man with Hsieh, sits across from him on a private plane to Los Angeles, hangs out in his tony Airstream trailer, where he lives, in Las Vegas, goes to Zappos meetings, pool parties, more meetings, and over the course of the book, drinks enough fernet (nicknamed “Kool-Aid” in downtown Vegas) with Hsieh and the Zapponians (the term given to Zappos employees) to make me want to sign all of them up for a few weeks in rehab.
When she’s sober, Groth documents Hsieh’s attempt to integrate “holacracy” into his organizations, a term that rids a company of hierarchy and titles, and instead creates an all-for-one do-what-you-want mentality. (No, I’m not kidding.) It gave me a panic attack just thinking of working in a place like that.
Both books feature Burning Man, which Groth eloquently (and aptly) describes as akin to a “circus on the moon.” As both authors note, the tens of thousands of people — many of whom hail from Silicon Valley — who traipse off to Black Rock City, Nev., once a year to dress like “Mad Max” characters, take a ton of MDMA, and dance late into the morning to playa tech rave music, are all so moved by the experience that they want to recreate it in real life. There are times that you wonder why both authors didn’t pick up the phone and call the parents of some of the people in their books. “Um, Mr. and Mrs. Brown, your son is living in a gluten-free polygamous coding commune and wants to drill into the center of the Earth, you might want to pick him up now.”
It isn’t so much that I didn’t like both of these books as much as I didn’t like the people in them. They, frankly, come across as self-centered lunatics who are intent on making a dent in the universe, without an ounce of self-awareness for the repercussions of how those actions could harm others. While the books do have some skepticism, more often than not, they read as though the authors consider their subjects to be gods, not mere mortals who just happened to be good on computers.
For me, I was left wondering how many more dents our universe can take.
Nick Bilton is the author of “Hatching Twitter.”
A version of this review appears in print on February 19, 2017, on Page BR18 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Denting the Universe. Today's Paper|Subscribe
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DIGGING INTO DTP: TAKEAWAYS FROM A Q&A WITH ‘KINGDOM OF HAPPINESS’ AUTHORImage
Mike Prevatt, C. Moon ReedThu, Mar 2, 2017 (midnight)
Journalist Aimee Groth begins her new book, The Kingdom of Happiness: Inside Tony Hsieh’s Zapponian Utopia, as an enthusiast of Downtown Project, but she turns critical once problems arise with the $350-million endeavor. Here are some of our takeways from her February 23 Q&A at Velveteen Rabbit with KNPR’s Joe Schoenmann:
Gone gonzo. “I wasn’t a fly on the wall, I was engaged,” Groth said, detailing how she become “part of the tribe” in order to gain journalistic access. Furthermore, Groth described being “seduced” by Downtown Project. It was enough to invite questions of a romantic relationship between her and Tony Hsieh, which, after coyly mentioning “rumors,” she denied. A romance would certainly fit the fairy-tale storyline of late-stage capitalism. Either way, perhaps Groth should have written a memoir? –C. Moon Reed
Delivering (un)happiness. Even though he wrote best-seller Delivering Happiness, Groth claims Hsieh wasn’t all that happy in real life, giving him a 7 on a 1-10 happiness scale—the same score she gave him on her cult-indicator scale. –CMR
Parachute journalism. From reducing DTP’s entrepreneurial and real estate developments to “a cosmetic upgrade,” to then brazenly declaring that, “We can’t even argue [that Downtown isn’t] better off,” Groth sounded not only at odds with herself, but with her total lack of local perspective. –Mike Prevatt
Blinded by the bubble. Much like DTP’s Container Park, her view was pointed inward, fuzzing out not only local context, but the bigger picture—and the Downtown that extends beyond DTP’s “llama” property footprint. When attendee and writer Joshua Ellis spoke of low-income residents displaced by Hsieh’s real estate purchases, she agreed it was a sad outcome. But it also seemed like a detail she hadn’t much considered. –CMR
Human cost. She does sympathize with those who moved to Las Vegas at DTP’s behest and lost everything—including the three individuals connected to DTP who took their own lives—saying the price of innovation was “really high … I don’t think it was entirely worth it [given] the psychological and emotional toll…” –MP
Managerial crisis. Tony Hsieh might have lured hundreds to Las Vegas and DTP, but Groth depicts him as a terrible leader who offered little guidance, support and empathy to DTP entrepreneurs struggling to stay afloat. Say what you will about Groth or her book, but at least someone is holding him accountable. –MP
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