Genre: Nonfiction
Length: 656 pages
Audiobook Length: 25 hours and 18 minutes
First Published: 2011
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Rachael’s Review
The Man. The Myth. The Legend. No one held more of a mystique than Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple. The iPod, iPhone, and Mac have revolutionized how we think of personal devices with innovative design and an almost cult-like following. Although revered for his innovation, Steve Jobs was a notoriously difficult person to work with. In this exclusive biography, Walter Issacson holds nothing back as he looks at Jobs’s full life through the juxtaposition of Job’s ability to change the world and his problematic personality.
Publisher’s Description
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.
Quotes from Steve Jobs
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
One way to remember who you are is to remember who your heroes are.
In the first 30 years of your life, you make your habits. For the last 30 years of your life, your habits make you.
You should never start a company with the goal of getting rich. Your goal should be making something you believe in and making a company that will last.
People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint.
Movie Trailer for Steve Jobs (2015)
About Walter Isaacson
Walter Isaacson is a professor of History at Tulane and was previously CEO of the Aspen Institute, chairman of CNN, and editor of Time magazine. He is the author of Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs, Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Kissinger, Elon Musk, and The Code Breaker.
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