Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I suppose it's healthy to learn that one's all-time favorite hero has warts and I expected a fair and complete portrayal of Steve Jobs--the good, the bad and the ugly. But as "the only authorized biography" of Steve Jobs wore on, it became clear that the author was intent on skipping over the good in favor of focusing almost exclusively on the bad and the ugly. I don't deny that I am among Jobs' biggest fans, and assume that most of us who admired him from afar have long been well aware of his idiosyncrasies. But I believe it was unnecessary to have his failings repeated and reinforced, page after page, ad nauseam. At the beginning of the book, I actually thought Isaacson both liked and respected Jobs. By the end, I became convinced that Isaacson disliked Jobs personally and actually harbored contempt for him as a husband, father, brother, son, entrepreneur, manager and human being in general. Why else would he have included so little insight from those who knew him the longest and loved him the most? If Jobs was such a monster, why did at least 3 people say he was their very best friend (Jony Ive, Larry Ellison & Mona Simpson)? John Lasseter says Steve was like a brother to him. And countless others, including Al Gore, Bob Iger, Art Levinson and Tim Cook, remained close friends with Steve for decades. Either they are all wrong about Jobs, or Isaacson simply failed to include their unique perspectives in favor of all the old, worn-out stories about what a meanie Steve could be. I haven't read his biographies of Ben Franklin or Albert Einstein, but unlike these previous subjects, Isaacson was given the exclusive opportunity to interview a live subject and tell us what it actually felt like to be Steve Jobs. Apparently this was not Isaacson's goal. Rather, I believe he fancies himself as a historian who was merely charged with the telling of history. And the result would be no different had Jobs already been gone for 100 years or more--just like Isaacson's previous works. I don't dispute anything that's contained in this book, but I do question why so many positive personal insights were completely left out in favor of the slow and steady drumbeat that Steve was a jerk--first, last and always. I believe Isaacson's main goal in writing this dry, incomplete, one-sided monstrosity was to persuade readers to dislike Jobs as much as he did. It is biased beyond belief, and therefore, cannot be considered a serious historical accounting. The book felt disjointed in the way it was broken into chapters according to the development and launch of Jobs' companies and products, such as iMac, Pixar, iPhone, etc., rather than in true chronological order. This caused a great deal of going back and forward in time to the point where I had to stop reading and actually Google certain events, just to keep the timeline straight in my mind. The actual date of one key event in Jobs' life, the acquisition of Pixar by Disney, was missing altogether. Telling the story of Steve Jobs' life according to his creations (which often overlapped), rather than by a more cohesive chronology, is reminiscent of the way mercenary hackers dissect each new iThing the moment it goes on sale, so they can disseminate which supplier's components are inside. Such data may be valuable to Apple's competitors and Wall Street, but says nothing of the essence of the product--or in the case of this biography, the essence of Steve Jobs. In addition to the lack of a cohesive timeline, there were instances of a lack of context. For example, on one occasion, Steve Jobs gets a call from then-President Bill Clinton, asking Jobs what he should do about the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Jobs tells him that if it's true, he needs to tell the truth to America. No doubt, this is an interesting tidbit, but there was no reference in the book that the two men had ever met one another, let alone built a close relationship that one would expect from this type of interaction. Without any type of context provided for their relationship, either before or after this phone call, its inclusion in the book seems more like name-dropping than anything else. And if Steve Jobs and Bill Clinton were such good friends and confidantes, then wouldn't the next obvious question be to ask Jobs how he balanced his friendships with Clinton and Ross Perot (Jobs' backer in NeXT), when they were running against one another for POTUS--the highest office in the land? Sorry, folks. No mention of any such thing. Just the phone call that seemed to come from out of nowhere. Another question left unanswered is how Al Gore came to serve on Apple's board of directors. There is no mention whatsoever of the two men having any kind of relationship at all. Of all his amazing accomplishments, Jobs believed his greatest legacy was his family and the company he built. But you'd never know it by reading this biography. The love of his life, Laurene, barely got more mention than his old flames, Chrisann Brennan and Tina Redse. And both of these old flames received far more attention than any of his three children with Laurene. Jobs' entire relationship with Patty, the sister he was raised with and who was also adopted by Clara & Paul Jobs, was relegated to one sentence saying the two had never been close. But if this is an accurate representation of their relationship, why did Patty hold vigil at Steve's bedside in the final days and hours of his passing? Likewise, there was no mention whatsoever of the passing of Steve's beloved dad, Paul. Jobs told Isaacson that he wanted to live to see his son Reed graduate, and the book briefly mentions that after Reed's graduation, the family had a graduation party at which everyone took turns dancing with Reed. Yet, a neighbor mentioned briefly in a blog post the night Jobs retired from Apple that he was so proud of Reed, he had tears streaming down his face during the graduation ceremony. Mona Simpson said in her brother's eulogy, "None of us who attended Reed's graduation party will ever forget the scene of Reed and Steve slow dancing." The distinction to me is that Isaacson's description was almost a non-event. But two other people--in just a single sentence from each--provided enormous insights into the same event and how much Reed meant to Steve. This simple distinction best exemplifies Isaacson's historical textbook style of writing, in which he seems incapable or unwilling to include many of the warm fuzzies that were also true of Steve Jobs. The final 20 pages of the book appeared to be thrown together in Simon & Schuster's rush to capitalize on Steve Jobs' death after witnessing the worldwide outpouring of love and grief. Originally scheduled for March 2012, the publishers moved up the publication date to October 24--just 19 days after Steve's passing. And it shows. Almost anyone could have written an historical account of Steve Jobs' amazing achievements. But Jobs gave Isaacson the rare opportunity to share much more than this. Just as Steve Jobs designed the iPad 30 years before it was launched, and always knew what the world would want well before it did, Steve also knew that the world didn't need another book about him that merely dwelt on his creations and character deficiencies. He gave Isaacson two precious gifts that he had never given to any other human being: 1) authorization for the biography and unprecedented access with over 40 interviews and countless emails and phone conversations; and 2) complete trust in the telling of his life's story--a supremely difficult and courageous thing to do for someone who guarded his privacy and knew no other way than to micromanage everything with which he was associated. Wouldn't his life's story be much more precious to him than anything he'd ever accomplished? With these facts in mind, Isaacson clearly whiffed on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in favor of being petty, biased and small. There's no question in my mind what Steve would have thought of this book. While it may be true that the key to Steve's genius was all about "what he left out," sadly, the same cannot be said of Walter Isaacson, because the precious pieces he left out of Steve's life's story say more about the author than the subject. In the end, it may well be that Walter Isaacson is just the latest on the long list of people who betrayed Steve Jobs. However, it is worth the read for its interesting tidbits, but only if you put the book down occasionally to bring it to life by watching online videos of Steve's iconic product launches, TV commercials and other interviews in which Steve quite clearly spoke for himself. At least for now, if you want to know Steve Jobs, watch his Stanford commencement speech and read Mona Simpson's eulogy for her brother.