From award-winning Wall Street Journal reporters, "a startling portrait of one of our greatest tech visionaries, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh" (Robert Kolker, author of Hidden Valley Road), reporting on his short life and untimely death and what they mean for our culture's pursuit of happiness. Tony Hsieh-CEO of Zappos, Las Vegas developer, and all-around beloved entrepreneur-was famous for spreading happiness. He lived and breathed this philosophy, instilling an ethos of joy at his company and outlining his vision for a better workplace in his New York Times bestseller Delivering Happiness. He promoted a workplace where bosses treated employees like family members, where stress was replaced by playfulness, and where hierarchies were replaced with equality and collaboration. His outlook shaped Silicon Valley and the larger business world. Hsieh used his position at work to integrate levity into a normally competitive environment. He aspired to build his own utopian cities, pouring millions of dollars into real estate and small businesses, first in downtown Las Vegas, Nevada-where Zappos was headquartered-and then in Park City, Utah. He gave generously to his employees and close friends, including throwing infamous Zappos parties and organizing gatherings at his home, an Airstream trailer park. When Hsieh died suddenly in November of 2020, the news shook the business and tech world. Wall Street Journal reporters Kirsten Grind and Katherine Sayre quickly realized the importance of the story because of Hsieh's stature in the industry, but as they dug into the details of his final months, they realized there was a bigger story to tell. They found that Hsieh's obsession with happiness masked his darker struggles with addiction, mental health, and loneliness. In the last year of his life, he spiraled out of control, cycling out of rehab and into the waiting arms of friends who enabled his worst behavior, even as he bankrolled them from his billion-dollar fortune. Happy at Any Cost sheds light on one of the most venerated, yet vulnerable, business leaders of our time. It's about our culture's intense need to find "happiness" at all costs, our misguided worship of entrepreneurs, the stigmas still surrounding mental health, and how the trappings of fame can mask all types of deeper problems. In turn, it reveals how we conceptualize success-and define happiness-in our modern age.

Résumé
From award-winning Wall Street Journal reporters, “a startling portrait of one of our greatest tech visionaries, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh” (Robert Kolker, author of Hidden Valley Road), reporting on his short life and untimely death and what they mean for our culture’s pursuit of happiness.

Tony Hsieh—CEO of Zappos, Las Vegas developer, and all-around beloved entrepreneur—was famous for spreading happiness. He lived and breathed this philosophy, instilling an ethos of joy at his company and outlining his vision for a better workplace in his New York Times bestseller Delivering Happiness. He promoted a workplace where bosses treated employees like family members, where stress was replaced by playfulness, and where hierarchies were replaced with equality and collaboration. His outlook shaped Silicon Valley and the larger business world.

Hsieh used his position at work to integrate levity into a normally competitive environment. He aspired to build his own utopian cities, pouring millions of dollars into real estate and small businesses, first in downtown Las Vegas, Nevada—where Zappos was headquartered—and then in Park City, Utah. He gave generously to his employees and close friends, including throwing infamous Zappos parties and organizing gatherings at his home, an Airstream trailer park.

When Hsieh died suddenly in November of 2020, the news shook the business and tech world. Wall Street Journal reporters Kirsten Grind and Katherine Sayre quickly realized the importance of the story because of Hsieh’s stature in the industry, but as they dug into the details of his final months, they realized there was a bigger story to tell. They found that Hsieh’s obsession with happiness masked his darker struggles with addiction, mental health, and loneliness. In the last year of his life, he spiraled out of control, cycling out of rehab and into the waiting arms of friends who enabled his worst behavior, even as he bankrolled them from his billion-dollar fortune.

Happy at Any Cost sheds light on one of the most venerated, yet vulnerable, business leaders of our time. It's about our culture’s intense need to find “happiness” at all costs, our misguided worship of entrepreneurs, the stigmas still surrounding mental health, and how the trappings of fame can mask all types of deeper problems. In turn, it reveals how we conceptualize success—and define happiness—in our modern age.

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Prologue: “A Freak Accident” PROLOGUE “A FREAK ACCIDENT”
New London, Connecticut, November 18–19, 2020

Fire Chief Thomas Curcio drove across the dark neighborhoods of New London, Connecticut, in the early morning of November 18, 2020, the crackling sound of his car scanner the only noise breaking the silence in his SUV.

He had been awakened by a call to his cell phone around 3:30 a.m. by dispatch with reports of a fire and a person trapped inside a house or possibly a nearby structure.

That wasn’t unusual. New London is only six square miles, with a population of about 27,000, but it is a densely populated urban area—“like someone took a slice out of New York City,” his fire marshal, Vernon Skau, likes to tell people. The small department is busy enough on most days, handling about 7,500 calls a year. A large glass cabinet at the fire station showcases pictures and artifacts from some of New London’s most memorable fires, large and small: a blown fuse at a fast-food restaurant that had charred the inside; a Samsung cell phone that had exploded.

Once the largest of a string of affluent coastal towns in southeastern Connecticut, New London has been in decline since the 1980s, when the Crystal Mall opened on the outskirts of town, sucking business away from local shops on State and Bank Streets in the downtown area. A recent attempt to infuse arts into the city stalled during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Chief Curcio was born and raised in New London and has worked at its fire department since he was twenty-two. As a kid, he pretended to respond to fires using his Matchbox toy cars. He had been given the top job at the department two years earlier, at an official ceremony covered by the local newspaper.

Fifty-eight now, with salt-and-pepper hair and a pleasing New England accent, Curcio knows many of New London’s residents by name and its streets by heart. The address of the fire, 500 Pequot Avenue, was only half a mile away from his house in a high-end neighborhood of New London. It was the middle of the night and freezing—about 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

He was not the first to arrive. It was a serious incident, and New London’s three fire trucks, including a ladder truck, had been dispatched to the scene. Several police cars and an ambulance had also pulled up in front of a fairly large gray house, not unlike others on the residential street overlooking the water. Curcio knew its previous owner, a local doctor, but not who lived there currently.

If it was a house fire, it didn’t look serious upon arrival. A thin plume of smoke rose from the backyard. The front of the house, with a sloping roof and a round attic window, appeared undamaged. Most of the lights were on, turning the property into a glowing beacon in the middle of a very dark street. Curcio steppe…