Review round-up: Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson
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It’s been just a couple of days since the release of Steve Jobs’ authorized biography; however, journalists and critics who had early access to the book have shared their thoughts on it. Walter Isaacson is a seasoned biographer and he was personally commissioned by Steve Jobs to pen his life’s story. During his work on the biography, Isaacson was given unbridled access to the subject’s personal life and complete editorial control.
Fans of Apple’s products will be delighted to get the backstory behind the design of some of the company’s most successful products. Facts about Steve Jobs’ early years and his personality traits are often discussed in the public domain. So, on a personal level the biography should shed new light on the last few years of his life. Following are excerpts of what some critics think about the merit of the biography and the man himself.
It’s the sense of relentlessness about Steve Jobs’ ambition, expressed through iPods, iPads and iPhones, that comes through Isaacson’s book. He dropped prototype iPods in fish tanks to prove that there was air inside, and consequently space to make the device even smaller, for instance. It may be difficult to hold Jobs the man up as the person everyone should aspire to be – but he made Apple into the company every businessperson aspires to run. For that alone, he is worthy of Isaacson’s treatment.
Matt Warman, Consumer Technology Editor
At the end of the book, before declaring Jobs “the greatest executive of our era, the one most certain to be remembered a century from now,” Isaacson takes the long view on his subject’s personality. “Polite and velvety leaders, who take care to avoid bruising others, are generally not as effective at forcing change,” Isaacson writes. “Dozens of the colleagues whom Jobs most abused ended their litany of horror stories by saying that he got them to do things they never dreamed possible.”
- Michael S. Rosenwald
The Washington Post
The author pulled no punches in this book, describing Jobs as a charismatic and inspiring leader but also as a man who could be very tough, even mean. Jobs told Isaacson that he and his team at Apple could “have a rip roaring fight and that brutal honesty” in meetings, telling Isaacson that he didn’t know how to have a “velvet glove” touch.
-George Stephanopoulos
After reading his biography, I get the sense that no matter how brilliant Steve Jobs was or how many fundamental shifts in our landscape he spearheaded, in the end, he was as human as the rest of us. It's a testament to Isaacson's skill as a biographer that readers can at last obtain the picture of Steve Jobs as a human being rather than a legend.
Chris Rawson
Isaacson writes dutiful, lumbering American news-mag journalese and suffers – as did Jobs himself – from a lack of sense of proportion. Chapter headings evoke Icarus and Prometheus. The one on the Apple II is subtitled "Dawn of a New Age", the one on Jobs's return to Apple is called "The Second Coming", and when writing about the origins of Apple's graphical user interface (Jobs pinched the idea from Xerox), Isaacson writes with splendid bathos: "There falls a [sic] shadow, as TS Eliot noted, between the conception and the creation."
Sam Leith
Guardian.co.uk
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