The people who are crazy enough

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, 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 offlimits. 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.

Walter Isaacson, the CEO of the Aspen Institute, has been the chairman of CNN and

the managing editor of Time magazine. He is the author of Einstein: His Life and

Universe, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, and Kissinger: A Biography, and is the

coauthor, with Evan Thomas, of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made.

He and his wife live in Washington, D.C.

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ALSO BY WALTER ISAACSON

American Sketches

Einstein: His Life and Universe

A Benjamin Franklin Reader

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

Kissinger: A Biography

The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made

(with Evan Thomas)

Pro and Con

STEVE JOBS

Paul Jobs with Steve, 1956

The Los Altos house with the garage where Apple was born

In the Homestead High yearbook, 1972

With the “SWAB JOB” school prank sign

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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition November 2011

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-4516-4853-9

ISBN 978-1-4516-4855-3 (ebook)

The people who are crazy enough

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 765