Steve Jobs (book)
Steve Jobs is the authorized self-titled biography of American business magnate and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. The book was written at the request of Jobs by Walter Isaacson, a former executive at CNN and Time who had previously written best-selling biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein.[1][2]
Author
Based on more than 40 interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—in addition to interviews with more than 100 family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Isaacson was given "unprecedented" access to Jobs's life.[3] Jobs is said to have encouraged the people interviewed to speak honestly. Although Jobs cooperated with the book, he asked for no control over its content other than the book's cover, and waived the right to read it before it was published.[4]
Describing his writing, Isaacson commented that he had striven to take a balanced view of his subject that did not sugarcoat Jobs's flaws.[5]
The book was released on October 24, 2011, by Simon & Schuster in the United States, 19 days after Jobs's death.[6]
A film adaptation written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Danny Boyle, with Michael Fassbender starring in the title role, was released on October 9, 2015.
Reception[edit]
Janet Maslin's review of the book for The New York Times mixed mild criticisms with praise. Maslin wrote that Isaacson's biography presented "an encyclopedic survey of all that Mr. Jobs accomplished, replete with the passion and excitement that it deserves."[13]
A number of Steve Jobs's family and close colleagues expressed disapproval, including Laurene Powell Jobs, Tim Cook and Jony Ive.[14][5][15] Cook remarked that the biography did Jobs "a tremendous disservice", and that "it didn't capture the person. The person I read about there is somebody I would never have wanted to work with over all this time."[5] Ive said of the book that "my contempt couldn't be lower."[14][5]
Commercially, the biography was a notable success, selling more than three million copies in the United States alone by 2015.[5]
Other media[edit]
Extracts from the biography have been the feature of various magazines, in addition to interviews with the author, Walter Isaacson.[16]
To memorialize Jobs's life after his death on October 5, 2011, TIME published a commemorative issue on October 8, 2011. The issue's cover featured a portrait of Jobs, taken by Norman Seeff, in which he is sitting in the lotus position holding the original Macintosh computer. The portrait was published in Rolling Stone in January 1984 and is featured on the back cover of Steve Jobs. The issue marked the eighth time Jobs has been featured on the cover of Time.[17]
The issue included a photographic essay by Diana Walker, a retrospective on Apple by Harry McCracken and Lev Grossman, and a six-page essay by Walter Isaacson. Isaacson's essay served as a preview of Steve Jobs and described Jobs pitching the book to him.[18]
Bloomberg Businessweek also released a commemorative issue of its magazine remembering the life of Jobs. The cover of the magazine features Apple-like simplicity, with a black-and-white, up-close photo of Jobs and his years of birth and death. In tribute to Jobs's minimalist style, the issue was published without advertisements. It featured extensive essays by Steve Jurvetson, John Sculley, Sean Wisely, William Gibson, and Walter Isaacson. Similarly to Time's commemorative issue, Isaacson's essay served as a preview of Steve Jobs.
Fortune featured an exclusive extract of the biography on October 24, 2011, focusing on the "friend-enemy" relationship Jobs had with Bill Gates.[19]
Even after a late release that year, the book became Amazon's #1 seller for 2011.[20]