From the distinguished author of the best-selling biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein, comes the exclusive biography of Steve Jobs.
Drawing from more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years, as well as conversations with over a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues, Walter Isaacson has crafted a compelling and vivid narrative of the tumultuous life and fiercely intense persona of a visionary entrepreneur. Jobs’s relentless pursuit of perfection and his boundless drive reshaped six industries: personal computing, animated films, music, telephones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.
In an era when America seeks to maintain its innovative edge and societies across the globe endeavor to establish digital-age economies, Jobs remains the quintessential symbol of creativity and ingenuity in practice. He understood that the key to creating value in the twenty-first century lay in the fusion of creativity with technology. He founded a company where daring imagination met extraordinary feats of engineering.
Though Jobs cooperated fully in the writing of this biography, he insisted on no editorial control, placing no restrictions on its content. He encouraged those around him to speak with candor. And within these pages, Jobs himself offers an unflinching and sometimes brutal honesty about the individuals with whom he worked and competed. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide a stark and unvarnished portrait of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, and unrelenting need for control that defined his approach to business and the remarkable products he brought into being.
A man driven by inner demons, Jobs could incite both fury and despair in those who crossed his path. Yet, his personality and his creations were inextricably linked, much as Apple’s hardware and software were, functioning as one integrated system. His life offers both cautionary tales and profound lessons in innovation, character, leadership, and values.
