A readable, sobering study of entrepreneurial brilliance laid low.
A somber rags-to-riches, genius-to-madness story.
Tony Hsieh (1973-2020), the founder of Zappos, was a born capitalist, making $200 per month in middle school with a machine that made pin-on badges. A natural introvert, he was committed to overcoming isolation and prejudice, emerging before his Harvard classmates as “a young man who was full of adventure and curiosity and was destined for greater things.” Some classmates stayed with him as he launched his first tech firm, a complicated brokerage for internet advertising that was successful enough that he was able to sell it to Microsoft for $265 million. He might have walked away and spent the rest of his life enjoying the wealth. However, as Wall Street Journal reporter Au-Yeung and Forbes investigative reporter Jeans write, Hsieh wanted to do something more, sinking most of his fortune into an endeavor based on the premise that, given the opportunity and the option of easy returns, customers would buy shoes online without trying them on for size. That led to Zappos, “first a customer service-oriented company, a shoe seller second—an ethos its new values set in stone.” After Amazon came calling, buying the company for $1.2 billion in 2009, Hsieh spun off into an effort to remake downtown Las Vegas into a business incubator while falling into a cycle of drug and alcohol abuse, shedding old friends and surrounding himself with people who were content to watch his self-destruction as long as they got a piece of the action. Said Hsieh to one old friend who tried to caution him, “If you don’t question me again, I’ll give you half my net worth.” The story has an inevitably tragic end, though the authors offset the self-doomed, mentally ill Hsieh’s downward spiral with his generosity and well-intentioned efforts to do well by doing good.
A readable, sobering study of entrepreneurial brilliance laid low.Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 9781250829092
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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