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A review by rbruehlman
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
5.0
This book was 530-some pages--a veritable tome--but didn't feel like it at all.
For as sensitive and controlling of a man Steve Jobs was, this book doesn't hold back--it showcases his good parts, his neutral parts, and his bad parts. He was a complex character, and, accordingly, the book evoked complex feelings for me--I rolled my eyes at what an immature manchild he could be, was excited by his passion, felt repulsed by what an asshole he could be, respected his singular drive. I wouldn't ever want to work for someone like Steve Jobs, but on the other hand, I can understand why many people did.
The book is exhaustingly researched, citing in-depth interviews with countless people who help synthesize a complicated, but comprehensive, view of who Steve Jobs and the company he built and why. It's half a thousand pages for a reason; at no point did I think the book had overstayed its welcome or lingered too long on a given topic. (If anything, I wish it had not elided so much over his time at Pixar.)
Biographies usually aren't gripping, but this book, somehow, strangely was, I suppose because of how well Walter Isaacson captured Steve Jobs' passion. Apple's arc in history and Steve Jobs' role in it is a secret to no one. I remember the irrelevant Macs that only seemed to exist in school libraries in the 90s, and the excitement of the iPod replacing the clunky Walkman in the early aughts. I like and use Apple products (some may say I am trapped in their ecosystem), but I never got caught up in the Apple hype even while Steve Jobs was alive. I had every reason not to be invested in Jobs' story. But, yet, reading this book, I was excited for Steve Jobs and the progression of Apple, rooting for the company's success, feeling sorrow at his failures ... even as I knew in general terms how the story would turn out. Steve Jobs cared so much, I kind of did, too. That is an accomplishment on the part of Walter Isaacson.
I would caveat that, although the book doesn't make any attempt to paint a rosy picture of Jobs, Jobs himself still feels somehow elusive. The book was written while Jobs was alive, yet it reads like a well-written biography of someone who is dead. For much of the book, we heard a lot from how Jobs made other people feel, but not how Jobs himself felt... a strange omission, given his proclivity towards extreme highs and extreme lows. He is quoted from sparingly. It is not until the end of the book, as Jobs faces his own inevitable mortality, that we see more inside the man himself. I don't consider this a demerit of the book at all--in some ways, the elusiveness feels in keeping with who Jobs was--but it was an interesting tone to a commissioned biography written of an (at the time) living man.
For as sensitive and controlling of a man Steve Jobs was, this book doesn't hold back--it showcases his good parts, his neutral parts, and his bad parts. He was a complex character, and, accordingly, the book evoked complex feelings for me--I rolled my eyes at what an immature manchild he could be, was excited by his passion, felt repulsed by what an asshole he could be, respected his singular drive. I wouldn't ever want to work for someone like Steve Jobs, but on the other hand, I can understand why many people did.
The book is exhaustingly researched, citing in-depth interviews with countless people who help synthesize a complicated, but comprehensive, view of who Steve Jobs and the company he built and why. It's half a thousand pages for a reason; at no point did I think the book had overstayed its welcome or lingered too long on a given topic. (If anything, I wish it had not elided so much over his time at Pixar.)
Biographies usually aren't gripping, but this book, somehow, strangely was, I suppose because of how well Walter Isaacson captured Steve Jobs' passion. Apple's arc in history and Steve Jobs' role in it is a secret to no one. I remember the irrelevant Macs that only seemed to exist in school libraries in the 90s, and the excitement of the iPod replacing the clunky Walkman in the early aughts. I like and use Apple products (some may say I am trapped in their ecosystem), but I never got caught up in the Apple hype even while Steve Jobs was alive. I had every reason not to be invested in Jobs' story. But, yet, reading this book, I was excited for Steve Jobs and the progression of Apple, rooting for the company's success, feeling sorrow at his failures ... even as I knew in general terms how the story would turn out. Steve Jobs cared so much, I kind of did, too. That is an accomplishment on the part of Walter Isaacson.
I would caveat that, although the book doesn't make any attempt to paint a rosy picture of Jobs, Jobs himself still feels somehow elusive. The book was written while Jobs was alive, yet it reads like a well-written biography of someone who is dead. For much of the book, we heard a lot from how Jobs made other people feel, but not how Jobs himself felt... a strange omission, given his proclivity towards extreme highs and extreme lows. He is quoted from sparingly. It is not until the end of the book, as Jobs faces his own inevitable mortality, that we see more inside the man himself. I don't consider this a demerit of the book at all--in some ways, the elusiveness feels in keeping with who Jobs was--but it was an interesting tone to a commissioned biography written of an (at the time) living man.