The Return to the Little Kingdom: Steve Jobs, The Creation of Apple and How it Changed the World

I really enjoyed listened to this audiobook. I've been listening to a couple of different biographies and stories about the early days of silicon valley and I heard a recommendation to listen to this one, so I gave it a try. It was a little convoluted how the story would bounce back and forth between the present (present for when the book was written) to the past. You do get a sense of all the people who helped start Apple and get it going. The worst part of this book, though, is the epilogue. This was added on about a year or two ago (the iPhone4 was referenced). The author tells how he is an investor in Apple and then launches into a praise-a-thon for all that Apple has done since the return of Steve Jobs. It was a little too gushing with praise for me. He did point out Apple's missteps for about a minute, but the other hour of the epilogue kept the theme of Apple's infallibility.

Other than that, I found that this was a great listen. Try it and enjoy!

If you're into apple this is a must listen. It focuses mainly on apple as a business, though there is some Steve Job's worship. Overall it was a good little book though.

I'm not done this book but thought I would warn others to not bother with this book. It's all over the place and it's hard to follow the progress of Apple. One day he describes moving to a new building and the next time they are international. The book is so boring that I barely pay attention and usually end up thinking about other things while listening!

No problem with Kevin's reading but Michael's story of the two Stevens was written way in the past and not brought up to date in anywhere near the detail.

The Steve Jobs story could be much more about the newer Apple products brought up to date with a lot less of the initial history and more of the current challenges and successes.

It seems to relive those times, so real and interesting to someone who, like me, likes to learn everything about when personal computers were born...

The first few chapters of this audiobook almost made me not continue listening. I thought the reader, Kevin Pariseau, sounded too stuffy and maybe it was just me, but I just wasn't crazy about his style...maybe it sounded too formal?

Anyway, the other factor that almost made me stop listening was the amount of laborious detail about early computers - the circuit boards and components, chips, etc. It was an amount of detail I think would tune out the typical listener and interest mostly engineering types.

I decided to keep listening and as the lives of Steve Jobs and the co-founders of Apple progressed, it did get more interesting and I'm glad I listened all the way through. While it still had too much detail, the story was pretty interesting, fascinating really, and I would recommend it. Maybe you'll want to skip some of part 1, but part 2 was definitely better and a good listen on my commutes back and forth from work.