This past April, I noted that esteemed biographer Walter Isaacson was writing an authorized biography of Steve Jobs due in 2012. A lot has changed since then. Steve Jobs's health took a turn for the worse, and presumably as a result the release date was advanced to today. Also, the title of the book changed from iSteve: The Book of Jobs to the more simple and elegant Steve Jobs. You can purchase the book today from Amazon in hard cover or Kindle format, or you can purchase the book on Apple's iBooks store. I haven't previously purchased an iBooks book, but that seems like the most appropriate way to read this, so I'll be reading it in iBooks format on my iPad 2.
Walter Isaacson wrote biographies of Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin, so writing about important and influential people is nothing new to him. What is different for this book is that Isaacson conducted countless interviews with Steve Jobs himself, up to the very end of his life. This gives the book an air of autobiography which is especially rare for Steve Jobs, who did not like to talk to the press about himself. And Isaacson is more than just a biographer. After growing up in New Orleans (we even attended the same high school) and graduating from Harvard, he then became the editor of Time magazine and then the CEO of CNN — jobs that gave him a keen sense of the events in our generation that were so influenced by Steve Jobs.
Janet Maslin of the New York Times wrote a favorable review of the book, and I'm very excited to read it. Considering that you are a reader of iPhone J.D., I suspect that you will enjoy this book as well.
Click here to get Steve Jobs from iBooks ($16.99):
Click here to get Steve Jobs from Amazon ($17.88 hardcover; $16.99 Kindle)