'Steve Jobs:' A Review of the Apple Co-Founder's Biography
One would think that after all the Steve Jobs' memorials and cenotaphs that Walter Isaacson's biography would laud the Apple visionary as some sort of god, but that couldn't be further from the truth.
"Steve Jobs" the biography boasts of a realistic and a times brutal portrait of the genius behind I-everything. Isaacson's exhaustive and relentless pursuit of the man behind the turtleneck led him to a series of interviews that give a well rounded account of how Jobs worked and lived.
By now, everyone knows that Jobs commissioned the project himself and when the author asked what could possibly motivate a notoriously private man to share so much about his life, he answered simply that he wanted his children to know him after he was gone.
To be sure, the Apple co-founder spent much more of his time in the office, than he did at home and this is his own way of asking his children's empathy. And perhaps by doing so, the empathy of the world.
"History will place him in the pantheon right next to Edison and Ford. More than anyone else of his time, he made products that were completely innovative, combining the power of poetry and processors," writes Isaacson of Jobs.
Yes, but at what cost? Every other employee that got close to Jobs' would say the same thing-Jobs relished bullying, he would lose his temper, etc. But most of them would genuinely say that he was an honour to work with.
Such is the mystifying truth about Jobs; at one moment he was the boss from hell, in another he would make you feel as if you were the most important person in the room.
If truth be told, Isaacson's "Steve Jobs" will stay around best sellers and reading lists the world over, if only for a chance to know true brilliance in our time.
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