Steve jobs biography book depository coupon code

Walter Isaacson. Goodreads Choice Award. Walter Isaacson's worldwide bestselling biography of Apple cofounder Steve Jobs. Based on more than forty interviews with Steve Jobs conducted over two years--as well as interviews with more than 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 steve jobs biography book depository coupon code for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.

Isaacson's portrait touched millions of readers. 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 the author, he asked for no control over what was written. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. He himself spoke candidly about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues offer 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.

His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values. Loading interface About the author. Walter Isaacson books Visit him at Isaacson. Write a Review. Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book! Community Reviews. Search review text. Displaying 1 - 30 of 22, reviews.

Steve Jobs was a damn dirty hippie. He didn't much like to shower or wear shoes. He believed his diet kept him from getting stinky, not true apparently. In fact he was quite odd and obsessive about his diets, he would go on kicks where he would eat nothing but carrots for long periods of time until he turned orange. This makes me wonder if these strange eating habits brought on his cancer.

Who can say? Steve Jobs was an asshat. He was an ass to everyone, even Steve Wozniak, who by everyone's standards is one of the nicest guys there is. Wozniak was Job's only friend at times, and looked up to him always, but Jobs screwed him over time and again. Jobs didn't even claim his first born daughter until much later as his own even though there was no doubt she belonged to him.

He also was a very emotional man, lots of crying and snot when he wanted something. Impossible to please, even down to the color of things. I seriously don't know how anything got finished, I really don't. Steve Jobs was a super genius. Despite of or because of all this he created the most amazing things. Because he demanded the impossible, he would get it.

I love my Ipod and my Ipad. I'm very attached, I don't want to live without them. I use the Ipod for my audiobook and podcast addiction. I'm even learning how to draw caricatures on the Ipad Thank you Steve for being a damn dirty hippie, asshat super genius. Your creations have enhanced, and changed our lives. Review also appears on Shelfinflicted Go and visit!

There are three things necessary for a great biography: 1. A compelling subject 2. An engaging narrative 3. Accuracy Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs has all three. Steve Jobs was a fascinating person whose powerful personality and extraordinary life make for a very compelling read. He revolutionized many different technological and entertainment industries by successfully blending technology and the liberal arts, giving consumers products they didn't even know they wanted.

He was able to defy reality by simply refusing to accept it a phenomenon referred to as his "reality distortion field"enabling him to do the impossible. On a personal level, Jobs was a very sensitive and emotional man, yet he was unable to empathize with the feelings of others, which, along with his "reality distortion field," led to him act in unsavory ways towards people in both his personal and professional life.

After reading this book it was easy to understand why Jobs is such a polarizing figure. But whether you love or hate him, it's impossible to deny that he had a major impact on the world, or that he was an interesting person. Isaacson's narrative style is engaging. Rather than listing a bunch of facts and quotes, which would make for a very dull read, he uses them to construct a story about Jobs' life.

The book is also structured in a logical fashion. Although largely chronological, the chapters do center around certain themes. Isaacson also avoids getting bogged down by technological details, which can be a temptation in a book that features a computer company. Even when the technological aspects of a product are necessary to illustrate a point, they are explained simply so that even a reader who is not tech savvy can understand.

In terms of accuracy, I can only judge based on what I know from other sources as well as my impression after reading the biography. I do not have the resources or connections to go through every assertion made and verify them. I can, however, assess whether or not Isaacson appeared to be presenting an overly positive or negative picture. I believe that Isaacson presents a realistic picture of Jobs that includes both the positive and negative sides to his personality.

Jobs comes across as a real person with a lot of flaws and perhaps a mental illness, but who has also accomplished some amazing things. I did not get the feeling that Isaacson was trying to steve jobs biography book depository coupon code or defame him. This is not to say that Isaacson is unbiased, but I have yet to find a biographer who isn't. A biographer must be passionate about his or her subject in order to devote the time needed to write a thorough biography, and with passion comes bias, whether positive or negative.

Isaacson was positively biased towards Jobs, however, this did not prevent him from exposing the darker side of Jobs' personality. He also contradicts Jobs' own statements with both facts and other people's accounts. I appreciated that he included both sides of a story. However, he does tend to justify Jobs' obnoxious behavior and negative personality traits by reminding the reader that these behaviors and traits also led him to do great things, and achieve the impossible.

It often seems as though Isaacson is implying that the ends justify the means, although the reader is able to form his or her own opinion. If you can ignore Isaacson's apologetic tone, which is present throughout, the biography does present a balanced picture of Jobs. Overall, I really enjoyed this biography. I would recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of Steve Jobs, Apple, or is interested in particularly influential people.

Although Pixar plays a much smaller role, there are also some interesting stories about how Pixar came to be what it is today. I would not recommend this biography to Apple haters or Steve Jobs haters due to Isaacson's apologetic presentation of Jobs' negative traits, nor would I recommend it to fans who would rather remember an idealized version of Jobs.

Also, I'd caution readers to remember that this is a biography about Steve Jobs, not about the history of Apple. While Apple is featured in this biography quite a bit since it was a huge part of Jobs' life, more so than his other companies or even his family, there are pieces of Apple's story that are missing or glossed over, presumably because in the grand scheme of Jobs' life, they were not that important.

If you are looking for a complete profile of Apple, this is not it, although it will give you some interesting insights into the company, and provide a detailed, though incomplete, history. Disclaimer: I think it's important to note my personal history with Apple. I have been drinking the Apple koolaid for about twenty years, which is most of my life.

In high school, I used to get into debates with people over whether Macs or PCs were better, often being the only Mac defender in a group arguing for PCs. Like any Apple fanatic, I've regarded Steve Jobs with a sort of reverence usually reserved for rock stars and actors. I was, therefore, deeply interested in reading about his life.

Take what you will from my review given my feelings towards Apple, and the man who made the company what it is today. Petra is wondering when this dawn will beome day. Update This is a very interesting view of Steve Jobs by the mother of his daughter, Lisa although he denied he was her father, despite paternity tests and his childhood sweetheart.

She doesn't think the film goes far enough in depicting his character truthfully. Apple's lawyers would sue her out of all existence if there was even a word that they could latch onto. But still, her feelings and opinions are her own. Jobs great achievement was to marry an uncompromisingly zen creativity to electronically-advanced products when all around built boxes.

The art of form following function taken to its extreme, where even the innards are as beautiful as the case, has an authenticity that appeals to all even those who won't pay for an Apple product. They say that when you are dying you regret not what you did but what you didn't do. Jobs scarcely regretted a thing, his ego was so vast he could hardly contemplate that he might actually have been wrong and since a young age, he only ever did what he wanted and could not be swayed or persuaded by anyone else to even do something as small as hold his acerbic tongue.

I was once an electronics designer. I made quite a lot of money and essentially retired at Sir Alan Sugar, the originator of The Apprentice and a friend and business acquaintance asked me to come to work for him as his personal assistant. I didn't, I decided to sail around the world instead. More fool me. The book made me wish, and not for the first time and not because I am now quite steve jobs biography book depository coupon code all booksellers are, except the Amazon crew that I hadn't left electronics, because my head is again full of ideas and that is where they will have to stay.

So I have regrets even now. I took the road less travelled and it turned out to end up in a tropical mangrove swamp where I sit, pleasantly bogged down. Jobs took the highway, the one with a good surface and plenty of signs. He overtook everyone and reached his destination of unqualified success, excellence, money and credibility in a very short time, and the world would be a lot poorer without him.

RIP Steve. You were a true artist and visionary. I haven't got a Mac myself. Because, as the advert said, I'm just not cool enough Edit May I went to dinner on a 93' yacht with a chef, hostess and a couple of crew and the captain gave me an iPad for a present. He said it was only a first gen. I did't see the captain for about three or four months.

We were in the same marina bar. He asked me how I liked the ipad and I said great and went to get it out of my bag. It was gone. Someone had stolen it from my bag within the last ten minutes I'd only been there that long. But who It does everything that the ipad did but it isn't thin and cool. But then neither am I. Finished March 1, Lynne Spreen.

Author 18 books followers. When I was at the halfway point I became struck by what a jerk SJ was. Yes, he was brilliant and all that. But he seemed to view other humans as nothing more than ants in his ant farm, sub-biologicals that he could squish whenever he felt like it. And did. Some might say that his gifts to tech development, or the fact that he changed and invented whole industries, would compensate.

Maybe the two things went together, cruelty and brilliance. But the lesson to be drawn here, future CEOs, isn't that his cruelty fed his brilliance. He was brilliant, and he was cruel, and they weren't linked. He was aware of the pain he was causing other people, yet like so many other overbearing, thoughtless and petulant overlords, Jobs was thin-skinned.

Also, I don't believe that his often-cited sense of abandonment, from having been put up for adoption, justifies his behavior. He was, as the author put it, "bratty. A thousand different variations of white weren't satisfactory. He wanted a new color to be invented, regardless of the damage done to the rollout of the new object.

As I said, I'm only halfway through the book. Hopefully there'll be some positive info about SJ that will balance out some of the negativity I've spelled out. I'll finish this review when I finish the book. Here are the rest of my thoughts. Isaacson makes an interesting point when he says Jobs was a genius. He means genius not in terms of a high IQ, but in terms of an ability to see things in surges of intuition, inspiration, and creativity.

Because of his genius, I agree that Jobs deserves to be included in the company of Edison, Franklin, et al. Steve Jobs pushed everybody until they wanted to kill him, but the pushing yielded amazing, brilliant new products. His unique brainpower allowed him to see how things might align, merge, and serve each other, and how utility might be blended with art.

That vision led to creations of whole industries. His obsession with perfection and control led him to flirt with emulating the Big Brother that Apple was created to bring down. One of the fascinating threads of this book was the debate between proponents of closed and open systems. Was it better to manufacture a pristine, inflexible system or the messier free thinking open system?

And what were the implications of that belief on Jobs' view of his customers and his worldview? Yet he defined petulance. His food had to be just so. He would send back a glass of orange juice three times until finally satisfied it was fresh. He was vindictive, cruel and even Machiavellian. He wasn't much of a family man, and he ignored his kids to a painful extent.

Isaacson mused that Jobs' meanness wasn't a critical part of his success. He was totally aware of its effect on others, yet he indulged. In spite of my aversion to the man, I actually felt empowered as I came to the end of the book. Steve Jobs had lived by certain precepts, which in the current economy we could all benefit from: Know your value Have a skill you can sell.

Be really, really good at something. Unbending to the end, even the prospect of death didn't soften him up much, but he brought me up short on the last page of the book, because I am obsessed with the same question: "I like to think that something survives after you die. It's strange to think that you accumulate all this experience, and maybe a little wisdom, and it just goes away.

So I really want to believe that something survives, and that maybe your consciousness endures. Since we'd just had a serious storm, I declined to rinse it. Ahmad Sharabiani. I wish I had written their biography myself, he was a myth, maybe then I could mix my words with the scent of Roses, and mix them with the sound of nightingales, so that they would always be fragrant and audible.

This is how you write a biography. This is now my gold standard for how those should be done — informative and riveting and yet devoid of hero worship, making the person feel really real while telling a story. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules.

And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. And it describes Steve Jobs perfectly. This is a story of a very difficult and yet insanely brilliant man. Steve Jobs was a revolutionary when it came to how we use our technology — but oh dear, was he a nightmare to deal with!

A man combining charisma and vision with volatility and pettiness, laser-sharp focus and incredible drive, and yet viewing the world through the stark binary of either amazing or horrible. He was intensely brilliant and an asshole at the same time. Jobs changed personal computers, animation Pixar! He created products that were intuitive to use and sexy and streamlined because he refused to just accept merely adequate.

A master of Reality Distortion Field — crazy determination to get impossible things done by ignoring their sheer impossibility. Out job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, "If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, 'A faster horse! Fantastic, and I say that with no reservations.

Oh, and one more thing. Think different. Easy 5 stars and a new yardstick by which to judge biographies. Rest In Peace, Steve Jobs. Riku Sayuj. Never expected to find this much enjoyment reading a biography. Isaacson has truly done a wonderful job with this book. For those who are too busy to read the entire book, please try to grab a quick read of the last two chapters of the book at a book store or airport or someplace - These chapters are a concise summary of the entire book as well as the thesis Isaacson builds up to throughout the book.

Besides, it will probably make you buy and read the whole thing anyway. To call this man a "Great Marketer" is probably a great disservice to him and Steve would probably have had a fit about that. I used to think of him as an epitome of modern marketing as well, but he would probably classify marketing as 'evil' in his radar. He hated the idea of any company focusing on marketing and emphatically states that is the whole problem with most companies today.

This is probably a difficult idea to get to grips with, but is essential too. We could truly be in a better world if they do. Just to clarify, I am not a fanboy of all apple products though I am sure the Mac is the best tech device till date but I do I fall on the android side of the fence. But, Jobs' philosophy on running companies and driving innovation is the best in the modern age and should be copied shamelessly, if not their product features I am looking at you Samsung.

Executive summary of Isaacson's "Steve Jobs": - Remove everything that is unnecessary. But these are not spoilers. The drama of this biography is in the decisions Jobs made, the way he followed through on these ideals. Read the book. In the same way that you understand a proverb much more after you've had a life a experience that demonstrates it, these will mean much, much more when you see them in the context of Steve Jobs' life.

Steve jobs biography book depository coupon code

Plus, you'll also discover Jobs' equally as compelling character traits: from his idealism to his irascibility. Taufiq Yves. Notes: Reality Distortion Field After reading the entire book, this term lingers in my mind. Once the field is activated, black becomes white, false becomes true, and the impossible becomes possible. Inon a whim, I bought an iTouch.

This small device feels like a terminal of the reality distortion field, making me turn the iTunes I once despised into software I have to use. I habitually put songs into iTunes, unconsciously stop using other steve jobs biography book depository coupon code players, and start believing that only iTunes is the best. All of this is caused by this small iTouch.

I have to admit, Apple products have an undeniable good UX, but also an undeniable bad experience that disgusts users. You swipe your finger twice to see the album covers lined up, feeling like the world is in your hands, but then you have to endure the inexplicable and unreasonable iTunes. What's more annoying is that they give you a sense that what you're doing is right and tasteful, as if using Apple products makes you superior.

Damn, reality distortion field. Crying Jobs loves to cry, very much. He might cry over a dispute about a badge number, cry when someone points out his mistakes, cry to change someone's habits, or cry when someone doesn't listen to him. But I think, because he loves to cry, he is quite endearing. Perfectionism OCD For a minor detail, he can overturn a year's worth of hard work by the team.

If he feels a bit dissatisfied, he shouts, "This is crap," and 2 months of hard work by a staff member goes down the drain. For the elegance of the product, the reality distortion field is fully activated, demanding others to do seemingly impossible tasks. Miraculously, they actually achieve it. Jobs has perfectionism OCD about everything. He has been a vegetarian for years, and even in his later years, he was picky about food though it might be because he couldn't eat.

Whether it's home decoration, company layout, product design, cars, planes, yachts, or employee personalities, he wouldn't be satisfied without rearranging them. This tendency even extends to users, as mentioned in the first point. None of Apple's core products are original. The operating system was modeled after Xerox, then copied by Microsoft, and Jobs cursed Bill Gates for decades.

Isn't this the pot calling the kettle black? The iPod is just a high-capacity MP3 player. When it was released, domestic knockoff MP3 players were already selling for 50 each. When the iPhone came out, I had no desire to buy it because China knockoff touchscreen phones were already everywhere. But maybe this is Apple's brilliance. They take a half-mature product or idea, integrate and perfect it, provide an extremely good UX, and break through in a seemingly mature market, completely changing people's consumption habits through the reality distortion field.

But there's also a Chinese company doing the same thing, and that's QQ. I registered for QQ Music back then just for the convenience of downloading music for my iTouch. But speaking of QQ's usability, it's actually not bad. QQ Music is very convenient for downloading songs, and QQ games are comfortable to use. It's really not bad. The problem is that QQ is a very unethical company, but compared to Apple, Apple isn't much more ethical when you really think about it now.

The second issue is that QQ has poor taste. Taste The book mentions mutual evaluations between Jobs and Gates. Gates said Jobs didn't understand technology, and Jobs said Gates had no taste. Jobs always claimed his products were the perfect combination of humanities and technology, and Gates expressed his wish to have Jobs' taste. I think Gates was envious and jealous.

LSD is currently being used in a variety of scientific studies. As long as there are college students, people will still take LSD. Maybe it was "bigger" in the 60s, but I don't think the popular wisdom has changed a bit since then. That was a very preachy statement put in an otherwise fair book. Mahmoud Afify. Pls help worst book so boring I only read bc I was desperate for a book for my English class and I needed one at last min so I got it from school library worst decision ever.

Samantha Matherne. Interesting life and man, but the middle chunk of of biography had me bored with the technical details. Deacon Tom F. A very thorough biography of one of my personal heroes. Mostly positive and smoothly detailed. A fine biography. Elizabeth Jose Blumenthal, K. Steve Jobs: The man who thought different: a biography.

New York: Feiwel and Friends. As with all brilliant minds of the last century, he had quirks that most could not understand or come to terms with. Using the commencement speech that Jobs gave to the graduating class at Stanford University inthe author elaborates on three main stories that he shared that day: the importance of 1 connecting the dots in life, 2 love and loss, and 3 death Blumenthal, Despite many, many technological flops before the path to what Apple is today, he pressed on to capture his vision for a clean, streamlined product line that provided a personal experience.

With an enormous amount of detail that naturally goes into a biography, Blumenthal manages to successfully paint a portrait of a lunatic who seems to be quite ingenious and revolutionary for his time. Reference: Blumenthal, K. When Steve Jobs was adopted because his bilogical parents were too young to take care of him, he was expected to live with a wealthy family to guarantee him an opportunity to go to college.

However, Jobs was raised by people who could barely get by, only allowed to keep Steve after they promised that he would go to college. When he grew up, he was set on Reed college and wouldn't go anywhere else. His parents had a hard time paying for the tuition. He dropped out of college and had his own ideas. Today, he's remembered as a great leader of Aplle and an exceptionally gifted person.

He's brought new and great technology to our world and left a great legacy. But how did he achieve so much if hedropped out of college? You're going to have to read the book to find out!!! This biography gives a lot of information about Jobs in a way that is understandable, formal, amd at the same time, still very interesting. I learned a lot and had fun at the same time.

Bluementhal did a great job with the writing style and made nonfiction exciting and with deep meaning. This book is a must-read for everyone. This book not only informs you about Steve Jobs but it also motivates you to work hard for your own goal and follow your own dream. I strongly recommend this outstanding steve jobs biography book depository coupon code I picked this book up during our vacation.

I'd wanted to read a book about Jobs for awhile now, and just couldn't bring myself to do it, for some reason. Maybe because my son is often making disparaging remarks about how stingy Jobs was, and unreasonable But despite Jobs personality flaws, he was a fascinating character. Creative, driven, obsessive and brilliant. I like reading about quirky people who manage to be successful even though they are abrasive and lack social graces.

And have weird habits. Blumenthal writes about him well, using plenty of dialogue and scenarios to give you a good picture of what Jobs was really like. I loved seeing the old photographs of him too, and reading about how the various Apple products started out. And Blumenthal was kind when it came to writing about technology; she didn't get too complicated and so it was easy for the average person to understand.

Walter Isaacson wrote a much lengthier authorized bio of Jobs, but this one was perfect for me. Noran Negm. This book taught me that steve jobs was human but at the same time he wasn't. He was a fool and a genius at the same time. Although he didn't know much about electronics and technology, he managed to revolutionize an entire industry of it.

His ability to see the potential and the future in an object was astonishing. Steve is a great thinker, but he's chaotic and often unrealistic. But, maybe that's what made him so successful. He saw something and made it happen, no matter what it takes. Steve does lack in the cognitive department. At least in his early years, he failed to create strong relationships and was cold and came by as uncaring.

It's nice to see him take a turn for the better. However, I fell that Jobs is a bit over credited. I mean, yes he pushed people to create his amazing products, but all the credit isn't his. He was the key to all of this but so many people worked very hard to create those products and I feel they should be given just as much credit. This book really tells you how Steve was: not entirely evil and not entirely good either.

This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers. Show full review. Author 3 books followers. Alexandro Sanchez. In my opinion this book was great! It included the biography of one of the most successful men that ever lived in the electronic industry. It showed and explained what Jobs did to overcome all of his problems and how he made Apple the great big company that is known worldwide.

Of course he had issues with Apple but that's why he was a part of other big companies known as Pixar, NeXT, and of course Apple. After several decades Jobs became rich and wealthy but at the time he had found out he had a tumor in his organisms. This book is great, I recommend to anyone that'll take the time to read it. For a biography this is a good book, but for who it is about it brought the rating down.

I liked this book but I just don't like the person it's about. He was extremely mean and rude, but I liked his determination for perfection. Don't know if I would recommend this book though. Mohamed Ramadan. Loved this book! Fascinated by such an intriguing visionary. More reviews and ratings. Join the discussion. Frequently bought together.

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Walter Isaacson. Phil Knight. Einstein: His Life and Universe. Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. Sam Walton: Made In America. Sam Walton. Mass Market Paperback. Brad Stone. Next set of slides. Popular Highlights in this book. What are popular highlights? Previous page. In the annals of innovation, new ideas are only part of the equation.

Execution is just as important. Highlighted by 4, Kindle readers. The mark of an innovative company is not only that it comes up with new ideas first, but also that it knows how to leapfrog when it finds itself behind. Highlighted by 2, Kindle readers. Highlighted by 1, Kindle readers. Next page. From the brand. Review The attention to detail is astounding, and this is an encyclopaedic record of Jobs's life right up to his battle against cancer and death.

He keeps a sturdily detached perspective about Jobs' many eccentricities. His biographer has written a captivating account of this digital visionary whose products have enthralled millions of people - Spectator 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 - Telegraph A must read - Sunday Times.

The attention to detail is astounding, and this is an encyclopaedic record of Jobs's life right up to his battle against cancer and death. Book Description An extraordinary book which gives us a unique insight into the life and thinking of the man who has single-handedly transformed the way we live today. He is the author of several bestselling biographies.

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