FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE BESTSELLING BIOGRAPHIES OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND ALBERT EINSTEIN, THIS IS THE EXCLUSIVE BIOGRAPHY OF STEVE JOBS.
Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.
At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, and when societies around the world are trying to build digital-age economies, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering.
Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted.
Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple’s hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values.
*** SPOILERS BELOW ***
AppleInsider has a story with some information about about the power that chief hardware designer Jonathan Ive had at Apple and continues to have a Apple even with Steve gone.
Quote:
"He told Isaacson that Ive had 'more operational power' at Apple than anyone else besides Jobs himself -- that there's no one at the company who can tell Ive what to do," the report said. "That, says Jobs, is 'the way I set it up.'"
Really interesting stuff! I don't think I've ever look forward to a book more.
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Here's where maybe it wasn't such a good idea to be one of the "crazy ones". NY Times outlines from the book, how at first, Steve mad the "decision to put off surgery and rely instead on fruit juices, acupuncture, herbal remedies and other treatments — some of which he found on the Internet".
Towards the end, he shifted to much more advanced treatments, "Mr. Jobs was one of 20 people in the world to have all the genes of his cancer tumor and his normal DNA sequenced. The price tag at the time: $100,000."
"Andrew Grove, the former head of Intel, who had overcome prostate cancer, told Mr. Jobs that diets and acupuncture were not a cure for his cancer. “I told him he was crazy,” he said."
"When he did take the path of surgery and science, Mr. Jobs did so with passion and curiosity, sparing no expense, pushing the frontiers of new treatments. According to Mr. Isaacson, once Mr. Jobs decided on the surgery and medical science, he became an expert — studying, guiding and deciding on each treatment. Mr. Isaacson said Mr. Jobs made the final decision on each new treatment regimen."
I can't help but wonder what the outcome would be if Steve didn't wait 9 months before aggressively treating it.
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If anyone hears of stores selling this book early (in Vancouver, especially!) please post them here in this thread. Would love to read it this weekend, and it seems like a few places have got their hands on them already!
I can't recall the last book that I read from front to back...I am sure it was in high school (I know I never did in College) anyway that is a LONG time ago, but none the less I am very much looking forward to reading this book. For anyone looking for a feel of what is to come in the book, the first article in the Time Magazine special Jobs issue was wrote by the same guy as the book.
Steve Jobs had the right to do whatever he wanted to his own body.
I don't understand this sensationalist, selfish view the media has recently adopted on his death. It basically amounts to "He's a prick for depriving us of his holy presence", and I don't agree with it.
He did what he did and the rest is history. This thinking of "Well, how do you know that his best work wasn't still yet to come?" is just flat out wrong. It's like people can't let go, and now they're in denial or something.
-DN
I've ready a TON of stuff online about the book and reaction to his death, and I haven't come across a single instance of someone in the media taking on the view that you described. I have read lots of excerpts from the book in which his very close friends and family tried to influence his decision on his treatment.
In the end, of course he had the right to do whatever he wanted and he did. People are still free to speculate whether it was a good decision or not.
There was another excerpt in which Jobs stated he was quite afraid of surgery and the intrusiveness of it to his body. There's a great movie on Netflix called "One Week" in which a man finds out he has terminal cancer and could only have one week to live and the struggle with fighting it which would be very interesting for people to watch.
I can only imagine what Steve or anyone who battles cancer and I'm quite certain Steve did what he thought would be best.
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For me, it's just wondering why an intelligent person makes one choice or another with their body. It's a kind of cancer with a low survival rate, made lower by not having the operation, with a life extended after the operation by any means possible. It's a conundrum.
For me, it's just wondering why an intelligent person makes one choice or another with their body.
It is interesting. In an interview, the author Walter Isaacson reveals:
Quote:
Steve Jobs was regretted not getting cancer surgery immediately in an interview. He also revealed Steve Jobs was afraid of operation as that looked like he was opened by others.
"I've asked [Jobs why he didn't get an operation then] and he said, 'I didn't want my body to be opened...I didn't want to be violated in that way,'" Isaacson recalls. So he waited nine months, while his wife and others urged him to do it, before getting the operation, reveals Isaacson. Asked by Kroft how such an intelligent man could make such a seemingly stupid decision, Isaacson replies, "I think that he kind of felt that if you ignore something, if you don't want something to exist, you can have magical thinking...we talked about this a lot," he tells Kroft. "He wanted to talk about it, how he regretted it....I think he felt he should have been operated on sooner."
I've been having some health issues as of late, and I've put off for over a year getting a full physical done by my doctor. Recent events have actually "inspired" me to finally book the appointment.
The very Canadian movie "One Week", touches on the subject... that fear, and a persons inner battle to deal with things similar really nicely:
Out of the blue, Ben learns he has stage IV cancer; survival, with treatment, is 10 percent. So this risk-averse, slow-to-act, quiet man buys a used motorcycle, says goodbye to Samantha, his baffled fiancée, and heads west from Toronto. He imagines it's a quest for Grumps, a mythical figure from his childhood; he takes digital photos of various "world's largest" roadside attractions; he chats with strangers, including two women; his bike slips on a dead skunk on the highway. Calls to Samantha meet with pleading that he return for treatment and anger that he won't. He doesn't want to be a patient yet. But, will he make discoveries, and what about Grumps? What's important?
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Steve Jobs Book!
For sale:
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