There have been many books – on a large and small scale – about Steve Jobs, one of the most famous CEOs in history. But this book is different from all the others.
Becoming Steve Jobs takes on and breaks down the existing myth and stereotypes about Steve Jobs. The conventional, one-dimensional view of Jobs is that he was half genius, half jerk from youth, an irascible and selfish leader who slighted friends and family alike. Becoming Steve Jobs answers the central question about the life and career of the Apple cofounder and CEO: How did a young man so reckless and arrogant that he was exiled from the company he founded become the most effective visionary business leader of our time, ultimately transforming the daily lives of billions of people?
Drawing on incredible and sometimes exclusive access, Schlender and Tetzeli tell a different story of a real human being who wrestled with his failings and learned to maximize his strengths over time. Their rich, compelling narrative is filled with stories never told before from the people who knew Jobs best and who decided to open up to the authors, including his family, former inner circle executives, and top people at Apple, Pixar, and Disney. In addition Brent knew Jobs personally for 25 years and drew upon his many interviews with him, on and off the record, in writing the book. He and Rick humanize the man and explain, rather than simply describe, his behavior. Along the way the book provides rich context about the technology revolution we all have lived through and the ways in which Jobs changed our world.
Schlender and Tetzeli make clear that Jobs’ astounding success at Apple was far more complicated than simply picking the right products: he became more patient, he learned to trust his inner circle, and he discovered the importance of growing the company incrementally rather than only shooting for dazzling, game-changing products.
Brings to Life the 3D Story Behind the 2D Legend It’s always been hard to take the true measure of Steve Jobs—he achieved legendary status insanely early in his life, and legends are mostly made of shallow cliches. But Becoming Steve Jobs brings to life the 3D story behind the 2D legend. The book puts special emphasis on the middle third of Jobs’ career, a period in which the colossal genius of personal computing seemed to lose his way in the pursuit of products that didn’t make sense at NeXT Computing, which he nearly led into…
A once-in-a-generation figure! The genesis of this book was the Fast Company story about Steve Jobs’s return to Apple in the late 1990s and his quest to make Apple an innovative and transformative super company. Based upon hundreds of hours of interviews with the man himself, Becoming Steve Jobs provides an engrossing and fascinating look into the once-in-a-generation figure that literally changed the world through technology. Of course, the same qualities that made his brilliance shine also left Steve Jobs with some rough…
The ‘unauthorized’ Jobs biography that has earned the praise of those who knew him best (and fills in details not known before) This is a fascinating biography that I enjoyed very much, but before getting into the details of the book itself I want to quickly go back in time to when Steve Jobs died on October 5, 2011 (it’s hard to believe that three and a half years have already gone by since that date). At that time, the Walter Isaacson biography () had already been written.Â