Walter Isaacson's "enthralling" (The New Yorker) worldwide bestselling biography of Apple cofounder 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, the author 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.

*** Biographical Note ***
Walter Isaacson, a professor of history at Tulane, has been CEO of the Aspen Institute, chair of CNN, and editor of Time. He is the author of Leonardo da Vinci; The Innovators; Steve Jobs; Einstein: His Life and Universe; Benjamin Franklin: An American Life; and Kissinger: A Biography, and the coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. Visit him at Isaacson.Tulane.edu.

Binding: Hardcover
Physical Info: 4.57 cms H x 23.90 cms L x 16.38 cms W (0.98 kgs) 630 page

Table of Contents:
Characters -- Introduction: How This Book Came to Be -- Chapter 1. Childhood: Abandoned and Chosen -- Chapter 2. Odd Couple: The Two Steves -- Chapter 3. The Dropout: Turn On, Tune In ... -- Chapter 4. Atari and India: Zen and the Art of Game Design -- Chapter 5. The Apple I: Turn On, Boot Up, Jack In ... -- Chapter 6. The Apple II: Dawn of a New Age -- Chapter 7. Chrisann and Lisa: He Who Is Abandoned ... -- Chapter 8. Xerox and Lisa: Graphical User Interfaces -- Chapter 9. Going Public: A Man of Wealth and Fame -- Chapter 10. The Mac Is Born: You Say You Want a Revolution -- Chapter 11. The Reality Distortion Field: Playing by His Own Set of Rules -- Chapter 12. The Design: Real Artists Simplify -- Chapter 13. Building the Mac: The Journey Is the Reward -- Chapter 14. Enter Sculley: The Pepsi Challenge -- Chapter 15. The Launch: A Dent in the Universe -- Chapter 16. Gates and Jobs: When Orbits Intersect -- Chapter 17. Icarus: What Goes Up ... -- Chapter 18. Next: Prometheus Unbound -- Chapter 19. Pixar: Technology Meets Art -- Chapter 20. A Regular Guy: Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word -- Chapter 21. Family Man: At Home with the Jobs Clan -- Chapter 22. Toy Story: Buzz and Woody to the Rescue -- Chapter 23. The Second Coming: What Rough Beast, Its Hour Come Round at Last ... -- Chapter 24. The Restoration: The Loser Now Will Be Later to Win -- Chapter 25. Think Different: Jobs as iCEO -- Chapter 26. Design Principles: The Studio of Jobs and Ive -- Chapter 27. The iMac: Hello (Again) -- Chapter 28. CEO: Still Crazy after All These Years -- Chapter 29. Apple Stores: Genius Bars and Siena Sandstone -- Chapter 30. The Digital Hub: From iTunes to the iPod -- Chapter 31. The iTunes Store: I'm the Pied Piper -- Chapter 32. Music Man: The Sound Track of His Life -- Chapter 33. Pixar's Friends: ... and Foes -- Chapter 34. Twenty-first-century Macs: Setting Apple Apart -- Chapter 35. Round One: Memento Mori -- Chapter 36. The iPhone: Three Revolutionary Products in One -- Chapter 37. Round Two: The Cancer Recurs -- Chapter 38. The iPad: Into the Post-PC Era -- Chapter 39. New Battles: And Echoes of Old Ones -- Chapter 40. To Infinity: The Cloud, the Spaceship, and Beyond -- Chapter 41. Round Three: The Twilight Struggle -- Chapter 42. Legacy: The Brightest Heaven of Invention -- Acknowledgments -- Sources -- Notes -- Index.


Review Quotes:

Isaacson gives the Steve Jobs fairy tale a swift, full, and less than utterly flattering airing in a book that Jobs authorized himself and from whose stark white and black Apple-like cover he stares like a Zen digital master. -- RICHARD RAYNER, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES


His story calls for a book that is clear, elegant and concise enough to qualify as an iBio. Mr. Isaacson’s Steve Jobs does its solid best to hit that target. --JANET MASLIN, THE NEW YORK TIMES



As Isaacson makes clear, Jobs wasn't a visionary or even a particularly talented electronic engineer. But he was a businessman of astonishing flair and focus, a marketing genius, and – when he was getting it right, which wasn't always – had an intuitive sense of what the customer would want before the customer had any idea.--SAM LEITH, THE GUARDIAN (UK)


...in some respects, Steve Jobs is a book told through the often discussed 'reality distortion field' of Steve Jobs himself: though other opinions or sides to a story are presented, Steve always has the last, blunt word.--LAURA JUNE, THE VERGE

Though Isaacson deeply admires his subject’s achievements, they are in constant danger of being eclipsed by the arresting ghastliness of the character that accompanied them. Because Jobs, as this account mercilessly attests, could be a world-class asshole: and after the gushing obituaries, breathless tributes and comparisons to Leonardo, Edison and Elvis that attended his death this month, that is news. -- TIM MARTIN, THE TELEGRAPH (UK)



Even if you have no interest at all in the lives of businessmen, this is worth reading, and no surprise it's the number one bestseller in the US. It's a - literally - epic story, superbly told by Isaacson with none of the breathlessness of the usual boring hatchet-faced Chief Executive's Tale. -- MICHAEL BYWATER, THE INDEPENDENT (UK)


Isaacson’s biography can be read in several ways. It is on the one hand a history of the most exciting time in the age of computers, when the machines first became personal and later, fashionable accessories. It is also a textbook study of the rise and fall and rise of Apple and the brutal clashes that destroyed friendships and careers. And it is a gadget lover’s dream, with fabulous, inside accounts of how the Macintosh, iPod, iPhone and iPad came into being. --MICHAEL S. ROSENWALD, THE WASHINGTON POST


Walter Isaacson's timely authorized biography will probably contribute to this obsession rather than explain it. -- DAN ZIGMOND, THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE


Isaacson’s book is packaged as a eulogy, with lots of family photos and a plain white cover whose Helvetican simplicity is characteristic of Apple’s own designers in Cupertino.--MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ, THE LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS


In Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson — the former editor of Time who has previously written biographies of Einstein and Franklin — has given us a nuanced portrait of the brilliant, mercurial, complicated genius who rethought and reimagined computers, movies, phones, music, and tablet computers. -- TINA JORDAN, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY



He does a thoughtful and speedy job of getting us to the Apple part of the story. --PAUL KEDROSKY, THE GLOBE AND MAIL (CA)


Journalist Isaacson had his subject's intimate cooperation but doesn't shy away from Jobs's off-putting traits. --PUBLISHERS WEEKLY


According to acclaimed biographer and Aspen Institute CEO Isaacson (American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and a Heroes of a Hurricane, 2009, etc.) in this consistently engaging, warts-and-all biography, Jobs was not necessarily the most pleasant boss. --KIRKUS