Walter Isaacson's "Steve Jobs"

I have just completed reading the authorized biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, and how fitting to have read it on my iPad! The book was certainly a compelling read and virtually "unputdownable" because of its celebrated and mercurial subject. Steve Jobs has long been one of my heroes, and this book served to bring home the fact that not only was he a creative and business genius all rolled into one, but that he was also very human in his flaws and failings. I discovered that my idol had had feet of clay after all, metaphorically speaking, but it endeared him to me all the more because of the way he made his mark in this world and the universe at large, despite all his flaws as a human being. Isaacson has rendered a powerful account of Jobs' humble origins as an adopted child growing up in a middle class family in the Bay Area and his meteoric rise to becoming a tech titan in Silicon Valley, a quintessential American story of a working class kid being shot into the echelons of wealth and fame and orbiting the stratosphere by virtue of his eye for design, quest for perfection and uncanny business sense.

The appeal of the book (other than that it comes from an author who's adept at writing biographies) is because of all the never-before-known information about the man who had kept his personal life a closely guarded secret his entire life, right up to his cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment. Isaacson has done a credible job of validating his information from multiple sources, thus providing us a varied, comprehensive perspective of Steve Jobs' personal life and career. The disclaimer that Jobs' gave full control of the book to the author seems quite incredible, given the fact that the subject of the biography was a control freak who needed to have a hand in every single detail of the products he created. The photographs included in the book have been well-chosen, drawn from every phase of Jobs' life, from his babyhood to the pinnacle of his career - another aspect that helps bring the subject closer to the reader.

Many incredible facts about Steve Jobs, the man, jump out at the readers, one of them being his nonchalant attitude that no rules whatsoever applied to him. His having driven around a Mercedes without licence plates and always having parked in the handicapped spot in the Apple parking lot is just one example of his I-am-above-all-rules attitude. His lack of empathy, his unkind treatment of waitresses, the brutality with which he fired people if he felt they were not A players, his constant berating and yelling at the Apple engineers, his outright refusal to give out stock options to friends who'd been with him from those garage days in his parents' home, his reality distortion field, his compulsive dieting and extreme veganism almost bordering on an eating disorder, his refusal to have surgery after his cancer diagnosis, his criticism of anything and everything that did not please him - these and many more reveal a supreme arrogance in the man who was bent on changing the course of the universe. One just wishes he could have done that more graciously and compassionately, and been a good, kind human being in addition to having been an innovator, creative genius, and entrepreneur nonpareil.

Great read and highly recommended!