Book Review: 'Steve Jobs'

Walter Isaacson is a great biographer, but I don't envy him one bit.

The man has written biographies on some of the most recognizable names in our history textbooks: Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Henry Kissinger. I can't imagine how difficult it must be to do justice to a person's life in a few hundred pages.

I haven't read Isaacson's other biographies, but I'm guessing the late Steve Jobs did. Read a few chapters of Isaacson's 2011 book that attempts to encapsulate the Apple co-founder's life, and it's quickly obvious why Jobs chose Isaacson for the task.

A quick glance at the cover (shown above this post) and it's immediately clear that Jobs had a hand in choosing it. It's aesthetically simple, and yet it conveys the intensity contained within. It's a simple photo, taken by Albert Watson for Fortune Magazine in 2006, topped with the title and Isaacson's name, typed in simple Helvetica.

Jobs had a hand in designing the cover, but he apparently gave Isaacson full license to write what the author saw fit. It definitely shows. The author makes no attempt to sugar-coat what became known as Jobs' "reality distortion field," or the man's penchant for being a complete asshole at times. He writes of Jobs' immense successes and resounding failures, in both his private and professional lives.

Isaacson's account comes from dozens of interviews with Jobs, along with accounts from hundreds of family members, business colleagues, friends, enemies and more. Much of Jobs' story is told in smaller, anecdotal pieces, and it's an elegant, effective method for capturing such an influential man's life in just a few hundred pages.

I'll admit that, as a reader, I was initially far more interested in Jobs' involvement in making the products I use today (I use an iMac at work, I'm typing this review on an iPad and I use my iPhone for more tasks than I care to admit) than I was in his personal life. By expertly interweaving these parts of Jobs' life, Isaacson makes them one, and I was truly intrigued whenever the author brought Jobs' home life into the fold.

I still found Jobs' product creation to be the most interesting aspect, however. It's why we know who he is in the first place, after all. I was especially engrossed later on in the book, after Jobs returned from his hiatus from Apple to revamp the company's personal computer lines and to create such revolutions as the iPod, iPhone and iPad.

The most notable accomplishment of "Steve Jobs" the book is the fact that, by the end, I felt like I had at least a small handle on who Jobs was, as a private person and as an innovator. That's a monumental feat in and of itself, and Isaacson should be commended for achieving it.

"Steve Jobs" is more than worth a read, especially for the Apple faithful. It's an accurate, unflinching portrayal of the man behind Apple, and while I'm sure Isaacson skipped some notable points, he more than makes up for it with the content he did think to put in. To capture anyone's life in a book is monumentally difficult; to capture Steve Jobs' took something spectacular. Bravo, Walter Isaacson, for achieving something of that magnitude.