Steve Jobs

By: Walter Isaacson

Narrated by: Dylan Baker

Length: 25 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

Featuring a new epilogue read by the author.

From the author of the best-selling biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein, this is the exclusive biography of Steve Jobs.

Based on more than 40 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 21st 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. 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.

©2011 Walter Isaacson (P)2011 Simon & Schuster

Juvenile-sounding narrator

Any additional comments?

I have listened for three hours and find the narrator disturbing. He might be appropriate for a children's book for impressionable young boys, but not this sophisticated tale.

Jobs is awesome, fun and I love Macs

Would you listen to Steve Jobs again? Why?

Maybe, it's a long haul

What was one of the most memorable moments of Steve Jobs?

He loves to walk and integrates it into his daily business practices and tough negotiations

What does Dylan Baker bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Fun to listen to.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No

Any additional comments?

Funny enough, Jobs would hate that fact the his photo is really blurry on the Audible audiobook icon on my iphone. This should be corrected, for Jobs' sake.

Amazing

wonderfully written book that captures the life of a very complicated human but one of the most influencing visionaries of the twentieth century.

A must have book

If you could sum up Steve Jobs in three words, what would they be?

excellent read. very honest. i expected more insights from the people that used to be close to him. their point of view on the matter.

What did you like best about this story?

everything

Would you listen to another book narrated by Dylan Baker?

maybe. sometimes recording was not the best quality expected

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

yes

Any additional comments?

no

Good read

I like that it felt unbiased, real, didn't hold anything back. I would recommend it to anyone wanting a brutally honest account of a contemporary genius.

I’m glad I put the time to finish this

For a while there, I forgot Steve has been gone for 6 years. Wow. Very well done. Very well researched. Done in a matter of fact way without vilifying or aggrandizing.

Good book - very interesting man

Good telling of the life of a very interesting and multi-faceted person. Who would have guessed that someone with such deep counter-culture tendencies could end up as CEO of the world's most valuable company. Isaacson presents a very balanced picture of Jobs in depicting both the positive and negative aspects of his personality and showing that Jobs himself was conflicted and troubled by these. The character who emerges generates empathy from the reader. There's also a thread of sadness throughout the book. Even though we all know what happens in the end, I found myself hoping that the cutting edge cancer treatments that Jobs sought and was able to afford would work and that he could continue as Apple's visionary leader, creating things that he knew people wanted before they themselves did.

I also enjoyed learning about the relationship between Jobs and Bill Gates - sometimes hot, sometimes cold,. Their orbits in the world were close and intersected frequently. The book depicts two men with extremely different temperaments and personalities, both of whom became wildly successful in the corporate world. I'd like to read a biography of Bill Gates, but I have an idea that it would be a bit boring compared to that of Jobs.

I felt that the book could have used a good bit of editing. There were endless descriptions of extended negotiations between various companies with which Jobs was involved. These could have been described more succinctly. I kept trying to skip over some of these parts without missing anything interesting.

A "must-read" for Apple aficionados - and I count myself as one. I started with an Ipod 6 or 7 years ago, progressed to Iphone and then a MacBook. I really want an Ipad - but hard to justify until I have money to burn. Sorry, Bill, but I wouldn't go back.

Masterful

I really have always appreciated Apple products, but Mr Job's has made me really look at and make changes in myself and my business. His story was truly inspiring.

Excellent Book, couldn't stop listening!!!

The Book was so well written and the Narration was Excellent. It was a book I never wanted to stop listening to, but realizing that it was a 24 hour long book, i just had to. I HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone.

A case study in what is required to make change

How is it possible that a man with such apparent indifference and emotional brutality could inspire others and lead the massive changes to society that have come about through technology? He must have had an eerie level of charisma. His disdain for any considerations about how he was viewed by others, the level of emotional trauma he exhibited when his will was thwarted, his vulgarity--and yet, everyone finds some way that they are like him, and his vision moves them beyond all sense of their own limitations. Isaacson captures the conundrum of Jobs' identity, and the reader finds himself falling under the spell of Jobs' charisma. The story caused me to wonder about whether those that have true genius have an obligation to operate autocratically, how anyone knows whether that genius is the type that Jobs expresses or the corrupt form that Hitler and Stalin brought. I was astonished at volume of ideas that flowed forth from the cornucopia of Jobs' creativity and the range of disciplines to which it was applied. He was not really a businessman, in the sense that the business was not the goal--just the tool for reaching his goals.

If you are in a situation where you believe genuine and substantial change is required, this biography may help you assess whether you are willing to pay the personal price to make that happen.