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Steve Jobs

by Walter Isaacson

Steve Jobs Cover

ISBN13: 9781451648539
ISBN10: 1451648537
Condition: Standard
Dustjacket: Standard
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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

From the author of the bestselling biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein, this is the exclusive biography of Steve Jobs.

Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years — as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues — Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.

At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, and when societies around the world are trying to build digital-age economies, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering.

Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted.

Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple's hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values.

Review:

"If not the greatest of computer moguls, the late Apple Computer co-founder was certainly the most colorful and charismatic to judge by this compelling biography. Journalist Isaacson (Albert Einstein) had his subject's intimate cooperation but doesn't shy away from Jobs's off-putting traits: the egomania; the shameless theft of ideas; the 'reality distortion field' of lies and delusions; the veering between manipulative charm and cold betrayal; the bullying rages, profanity and weeping; the bizarre vegetarian diets that he believed would ward off body odor and cancer (he was tragically wrong on both counts). Isaacson also sees the constructive flip-side of Jobs's flaws, arguing that his crazed perfectionism and sublime sense of design — he wanted even his computers' circuit boards to be visually elegant — begat brilliant innovations, from the Mac to the iPad, that blended 'poetry and processors.' The author oversells Jobs as the digital artiste pitting well-crafted, vertically integrated personal computing experiences against the promiscuously licensed, bulk-commodity software profferred by his Microsoft rival Bill Gates. (Gates's acerbic commentary on Jobs's romanticism often steals the page.) Still, Isaacson's exhaustively researched but well-paced, candid and gripping narrative gives us a great warts-and-all portrait of an entrepreneurial spirit — and one of the best accounts yet of the human side of the computer biz. Photos. (Oct. 24)" Publishers Weekly Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Synopsis:

From bestselling author Walter Isaacson comes the landmark biography of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. In Steve Jobs: A Biography, Isaacson provides an extraordinary account of Jobs' professional and personal life. Drawn from three years of exclusive and unprecedented interviews Isaacson has conducted with Jobs as well as extensive interviews with Jobs' family members, key colleagues from Apple and its competitors, Steve Jobs is the definitive portrait of the greatest innovator of his generation.

About the Author

Walter Isaacson, the CEO of the Aspen Institute, has been chairman of CNN and the managing editor of Time magazine. He is the author of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life and of Kissinger: A Biography, and the coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and daughter.

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 32 comments:

writermala, May 9, 2012 (view all comments by writermala)
The Book opens with the quote, "The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do." This about sums up Steve Jobs.

He was crazy and he changed the world. He was mean and he was a genius. He brought about the personal computer revolution and he gave the world products we could love.

The biography tells it like it is - no holds barred; it tells the good and the bad side of Steve Jobs and there were a lot of both.

The book is a history of Apple as much as it is a biography of Steve Jobs and makes for very interesting reading.
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Darije, January 21, 2012 (view all comments by Darije)
I loved this book! Steve's management style was too much but I love the idea of not doing presentations in meetings. Jobs was brilliant!
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(1 of 2 readers found this comment helpful)
dolds, January 21, 2012 (view all comments by dolds)
I originally picked up this book because Isaacson is one of my favorite authors who presents an unvarnished view of his subjects, and he did not disappoint. You don't often hear the words "page turner" and biography in the same review. While I'm quite aware of Jobs' place in the microcomputer revolution, and was well aware how his vision went beyond "disruption" to completely, and forever, transforming several industries, I was really intrigued how his obsession with craftsmanship formed a large part of who Jobs was. On the other end of the spectrum, it was really sad to hear him describe his purpose for this book, largely so his kids would really know who he was and why he made the decisions he did.  A very complex man very deftly portrayed in a well written biography. Even if you are not involved in any technical craft or work in a design-centric universe, you will be enlightened by this exploration of a modern genius
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(1 of 2 readers found this comment helpful)
View all 32 comments

Product Details

ISBN:
9781451648539
Author:
Isaacson, Walter
Publisher:
Simon & Schuster
Subject:
Business
Subject:
Biography/Business
Copyright:
Publication Date:
20111024
Binding:
Hardback
Language:
English
Pages:
656
Dimensions:
9.25 x 6.12 in

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Steve Jobs Used Hardcover
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Product details 656 pages Simon & Schuster - English 9781451648539 Reviews:
"Publishers Weekly Review" by , "If not the greatest of computer moguls, the late Apple Computer co-founder was certainly the most colorful and charismatic to judge by this compelling biography. Journalist Isaacson (Albert Einstein) had his subject's intimate cooperation but doesn't shy away from Jobs's off-putting traits: the egomania; the shameless theft of ideas; the 'reality distortion field' of lies and delusions; the veering between manipulative charm and cold betrayal; the bullying rages, profanity and weeping; the bizarre vegetarian diets that he believed would ward off body odor and cancer (he was tragically wrong on both counts). Isaacson also sees the constructive flip-side of Jobs's flaws, arguing that his crazed perfectionism and sublime sense of design — he wanted even his computers' circuit boards to be visually elegant — begat brilliant innovations, from the Mac to the iPad, that blended 'poetry and processors.' The author oversells Jobs as the digital artiste pitting well-crafted, vertically integrated personal computing experiences against the promiscuously licensed, bulk-commodity software profferred by his Microsoft rival Bill Gates. (Gates's acerbic commentary on Jobs's romanticism often steals the page.) Still, Isaacson's exhaustively researched but well-paced, candid and gripping narrative gives us a great warts-and-all portrait of an entrepreneurial spirit — and one of the best accounts yet of the human side of the computer biz. Photos. (Oct. 24)" Publishers Weekly Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
"Synopsis" by , From bestselling author Walter Isaacson comes the landmark biography of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. In Steve Jobs: A Biography, Isaacson provides an extraordinary account of Jobs' professional and personal life. Drawn from three years of exclusive and unprecedented interviews Isaacson has conducted with Jobs as well as extensive interviews with Jobs' family members, key colleagues from Apple and its competitors, Steve Jobs is the definitive portrait of the greatest innovator of his generation.
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