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

GREAT!!!!

This was a great read/listen. The book has been a great 2weeks of listen 24 hours.It motivate you in some of the weirdest ways. He was definitely a genius, anyone that says otherwise after reading this book isn’t the apart of the elite few that will change the world.

Steve Jobs was a visionary!

Great book about a great person! I enjoyed every minute of it! You want regret the decision to read this one!

What a story, what a guy!

This was an awesome biography. Definitely one of the best. It is raw, direct and very insightful, to the point that you could almost understand who Steve was. One thing is certain, nobody is perfect. But oh boy... Steve did a lot of things that shook the world. Very inspiring! A must read!

Changed the world

A must read. They should study him in school . What a man and what a great read/listen

Fascinating

Any additional comments?

Walter Isaacson set out to write a balanced account of the life of Steve Jobs and I think he did a pretty good job. It can not have been easy to remain objective given Steve's tempestuous personality. The book does a good job of covering Steve's life at more or less the right level of detail. There were times toward the end when I thought the evaluations of Steve's philosophy and lack of social graces got a little repetitive, but on the whole that is a minor criticism. I think it's fascinating to take a look into what kind of a person it takes to build a company like Apple. You may not like him (he was more or less a total brat) or be a fan of Apple, but he did build things that have changed our popular culture. One of the key facts that I take away from the book is that Steve was more about the quality and design of the products than he was about the business. You can see it in the products themselves.

fascinating life story

Where does Steve Jobs rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Very interesting and insightful look at Steve Job's life...definitely worth the time to hear every word.

Captivating in every way.

A fascinating subject. Very well crafted story. Very captivating story. 25 hours of narration and I was disappointed it was done. Could, and will, listen to it again. Looking forward to exploring the author's other works.

For the crazy ones.

The narrator helped put emotion and feeling into an already great biography. This book outlines an amazing individual's life...not perfect but amazing. I could go on and on but won't...it is a fantastic glimpse at greatness. I highly recommend it!

Even better than expected

What made the experience of listening to Steve Jobs the most enjoyable?

I was a little skeptical of this book, because coming out so soon after Jobs' death, I (wrongly) assumed it was a thrown-together work to take commercial advantage of the interest his death generated. I couldn't have been more wrong. It turns out that Isaacson had been working on the book for years, and the book is a spell-binding account of a deeply flawed man who changed the world of technology forever.

Wrong reader for this piece

Great book. Baker's read is clear, but his delivery undermines the material, turning every voice (including Jobs) into a grade-school caricature.