iCon Steve Jobs

The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business

By: Jeffrey S. Young, William L. Simon

Narrated by: Alan Sklar

Length: 3 hrs and 33 mins

Publisher's summary

In this encore to his classic 1987 unauthorized biography of Steve Jobs (Steve Jobs: The Journey is the Reward), Jeffrey Young examines Jobs' remarkable resurgence, one of the most amazing business comeback stories in years.

Lightning never strikes twice, but Steve Jobs has. Transforming modern culture first with the Macintosh and now the iPod, he's also dazzled and delighted audiences with his Pixar movies. And along the way, he's bedeviled, destroyed, and demoralized hundreds of people. Ten years after the leading maverick of the computer age and the king of digital cool crashed from the height of Apple's meteoric rise, Steve Jobs rose from the ashes in a Machiavellian coup, and has now become more famous than ever.

©2005 Jeffrey S. Young and William L. Simon (P)2005 Penton Overseas, Inc.

Critic reviews

"One of the most captivating business biographies of recent years. Young and Simon have done a masterful job." (Ft. Worth Star-Telegram)
"A fascinating tale of an imaginative genius." (BookPage)

Very enjoyable

I do not normally go for biographies but seeing this on a clients desk led me to search for it on audible. It was excellent and shows a balanced view of Steve Jobs the person.

very insperational!

i had always enjoyed the story of apple and Microsoft. another video that people should watch is Pirates of Silicon Valley. However this audio book was great. it had covered allot of details i was not sure i knew about Steve. However i was a bit shocked that they did not mention the whole UNIX and OS revamp journey. All in all it was a great listen!

Obsolete due to Walter Isaacson biograph!

What would have made iCon Steve Jobs better?

I read this book after reading Walter Isaacson biography that is far more complete and informative. First off this book ends before iPhone or iPad is developed so it is really missing a huge final section. Even in the parts that's are covered by both books there were maybe 3 very minor nuggets of information that I learned from this book that were not in the Walter Isaacson version.This book read like a high school english class trying to write an apple press release most of the time.Both books talk about a reality distortion field around Steve jobs. This author was totally caught up in that field.

Has iCon Steve Jobs turned you off from other books in this genre?

Read the Walter Isaacson biography it is far more balanced and far more complete.

Would you be willing to try another one of Alan Sklar’s performances?

I would trybanother as a canadian I find the accent harder to lisen to then more northern accents.

What character would you cut from iCon Steve Jobs?

Besides the fan boy mentality it the lack of information that's the matter.

Any additional comments?

Walter Isaacson biography makes this one obsolete don't waste you time or money unless you have a real love of Steve jobs and the Walter Isaacson biography isn't enough.

Horrible Reader

I'm sure the content is fine, but with such an old and stoggy sounding reader.. I didn't even complete the listen and LOVE this stuff. Why would that get someone who sounds like he doesn't know email from interwebs to read such a tech related topic!!??

Even worse than I had heard it was

You may have heard that Steve Jobs had all the copies of this book pulled from Apple retail stores.

You might then assume that it was an inside story that pulled no punches as to the subject.

Hardly true!

The book (or at least this abridged audio version), is a terrible glossing over of the negative parts of the Apple/Jobs story, and a puff piece on how brilliant Steve is.

Just one example shows how soft on Steve the author is. Much is made in the book of how surprised people were when Steve married Laurene Powell. And how when she had kids, how much Steve was transformed into being an incredible Dad who spent so much time with his kids.

You would never know that Steve Jobs had had a child with his unmarriage girl-friend. And for two years, after he was quite wealthy, Jobs denied being the father. He insisted he was sterile and couldn't have fathered a child.

Not only that, but the mother of the child had to go on welfare.

But not a word of this is mentioned in this audio book.

Similarly, no mention is made of just how awful Steve is to work for, how badly he managed Apple and Next, and how poor the current OS X operating system is compared to features that were in the original Mac.

It's just a puff piece. I'm surprised Steve pulled it from the Apple shelves.

Misses all the important stuff

This abridged version skips all the important points about Steve Jobs and the events that happened.

Great book, poor audio adaption.

mis abridged

very wrongly abridged!

Mostly harmless

Not quite the riveting expose of what has made Steve Jobs the "iCon" that he is, and an awkward uncertainty from the author about whether he is a saint or a sinner. Nevertheless, a reasonable commute listen. Of course the book is now somewhat dated (it ends just as things are starting to get interesting at Apple), so there are probably better options out there.

Leaves a lot to be desired…

After reading the Walter Isaacson book I wanted a bit more, unfortunately this book is full of lapses and, it seams, some inaccuracies. The problem with abridged books is that I don’t know who’s to blame.

Way too abridged

Very interesting, but you get the sense that you're getting only a quarter of what you need. This book sets you up for a Part II that fills in the blanks.