Publishing a biography just after its subject’s death is a risky business: if it’s too flattering, it will be labelled as hagiography and not taken seriously; if it’s too unflattering, it seems disrespectful and you alienate his fans.
Attempting to vault over these hurdles is Walter Isaacson – the former managing editor of Time magazine and author of biographies of Einstein and Benjamin Franklin – who claims to have written the definitive life of Steve Jobs. Though he never read it, the late Apple co-founder authorised this biography and was interviewed by Isaacson over forty times.
Are there any big revelations?
Not really. He didn’t like Bill Gates. He refused to meet his natural father. He wasn’t very nice to work for. He turned up at an Apple Halloween party dressed as Jesus. He used to wash his feet in the toilet. But then we knew most of that already. Jobs comes across as your textbook genius, whose obsessiveness and egomania may have changed the course of civilisation but made him quite a tricky person to live with.
What are the critics saying?
Tim Martin, Telegraph
‘Isaacson organises his material well and writes with a pacy, demotic style, though the speed with which this book was rushed out after Jobs’s death is occasionally noticeable at the copy-editing level … Taken as a whole, though, this is a riveting book, with as much to say about the transformation of modern life in the information age as about its supernaturally gifted and driven subject.’
Toby Young, Mail on Sunday
‘Could he have achieved all [he did] without being quite such a cruel, arrogant man? The answer, says Isaacson in this richly entertaining biography, is no. Jobs was a ruthless entrepreneur who trampled over business rivals in his climb to the top. “Jobs never studied Nietzsche, but the philosopher’s concept of the will to power and the special nature of the Uberman came naturally to him,’ he writes.”’
Sam Leith, Guardian
‘Isaacson writes dutiful, lumbering American news-mag journalese and suffers — as did Jobs himself — from a lack of sense of proportion. Chapter headings evoke Icarus and Prometheus. The one on the Apple II is subtitled “Dawn of a New Age”, the one on Jobs’s return to Apple is called “The Second Coming” … But get past all that pomp and there’s much to enjoy.’
Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times
‘There is a kind of terrible comedy running through the narrative as one wide-eyed engineer after another presents his finest works to Jobs only to be told, “This is s***!” … Some worked out that “This is s***” actually meant: “Explain to me why this is a good idea.’
Janet Maslin, New York Times
‘[The biography] greatly admires its subject. But its most adulatory passages are not about people. Offering a combination of tech criticism and promotional hype, Mr. Isaacson describes the arrival of each new product right down to Mr. Jobs’s theatrical introductions and the advertising campaigns. But if the individual bits of hoopla seem excessive, their cumulative effect is staggering.’
Murad Ahmed, Times
‘Jobs comes across as an epic character in the mould of Tony, the mafia don from the The Sopranos — compelling and charismatic, yet cruel and destructive. There is no shortage of material here for a great movie adaptation.’
What’s the verdict?
Isaacson has pulled off a pretty balanced biography: a warts-and-all portrayal that also celebrates its subject’s outstanding gifts. It also manages to be a good, gossipy read.
Where can I find out more?
Read excerpts from the book at Reuters.com and Fortune magazine.
Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson is published by Little, Brown at £25
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