Plot Summary
No one person changed the face of the 21st century like Steve Jobs. His biographer, Walter Isaacson, says, “His legacy is transforming seven industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, digital publishing, and retail stores. His legacy is creating what became the most valuable company on earth. . . . He was a genius at connecting art to technology, of making leaps based on intuition and imagination.”
Isaacson explored Jobs’ personal stories by means of more than 40 interviews in which he and Jobs went walking, or sat in Jobs’ garden, while Isaacson just let him talk. Aware of Jobs’ legendary “Reality Distortion Field,” Isaacson supplemented these informal talks by interviewing over 100 of Jobs’ friends, enemies, colleagues, and competitors.
The result is a vivid, if incomplete, portrait of a man who was ruled by contradictions: he was a counterculturist who became a billionaire through business; he was harsh to those he most inspired. Further, Jobs demanded no editorial control over the content of this biography. He did not even read it before his death at the age of 56 from pancreatic cancer on October 5, 2011.
It is an appropriate tribute to Steve Jobs that this biography is one of 100,000 available for instant download at The AudioBookStore.
Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life and Kissinger: A Biography, is CEO of the Aspen Institute. He is former chairman of CNN and managing editor of Time magazine. Isaacson currently lives in Washington, D.C., with his family.
“This work is not only the biography of the intuitive genius called Steve Jobs but also that of Apple, the world’s most creative company. I was absolutely enthralled and became almost obsessive with reading it. I will never use my iPod, iPad or iPhone again without thinking of the man who knew we would need these things and made them. And made them so beautifully. As he said: Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.” Thank you for the music, Steve.”
—
Shelley (5 out of 5 stars)
Publisher Summary
2012 Audie Award Finalist for Audiobook of the Year
Walter Isaacson’s “enthralling” (The New Yorker) worldwide bestselling biography of Apple cofounder Steve Jobs.
Based on more than forty interviews with Steve Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than 100 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. Isaacson’s portrait touched millions of readers.
At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, 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 the author, he asked for no control over what was written. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. He himself spoke candidly about the people he worked with and competed against.
His friends, foes, and colleagues offer 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.
His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values.
Steve Jobs is the inspiration for the movie of the same name starring Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen, and Jeff Daniels, directed by Danny Boyle with a screenplay by Aaron Sorkin.
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