Steve Jobs By Walter Isaacson Book Review– Successful people, businessmen and entrepreneurs are not born successful, they work harder than ordinary people and achieve it with their willpower. Whenever you want to learn something, the aim is to learn from experts and examine their journeys and see what led to their success and what were the mistakes that they made so that you can avoid them.
Then, when it comes to business, innovation, ideas, and all the success mantras, who can be a perfect go for it? Well, the very first name that came to my mind was “Steve Jobs”. Yes, the co-founder and former CEO of Apple. His innovation, thinking, imagination, and perspective have revolutionized the way we perceive technology now.
Sometimes, the way you think about certain things comes from the types of books you read and the kind of people you surround yourself with. If you are an entrepreneur or willing to be one, it is extremely important to read the right books.
Anyway, I ran to the nearest bookstore and got a copy of the book “Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson” and here is the Book Review for it.
General Overview- Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson | Book Review.
Author Walter Isaacson Overview
The story of Steve Jobs is put forth wonderfully by the author Walter Isaacson. Not just an author, he is also a journalist and a professor, again, not just this, Walter Isaacson was also the President and CEO of the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C., the chairman and CEO of CNN, and the editor of Time.
Doy! That’s a long list!
Walter Isaacson, born May 20, 1952, in Louisiana has attended the top universities of the world like the Harvard University, the oxford university, has written more than 10 books including “Steve Jobs”– the biography of Steve Jobs.
Steve Jobs himself requested Isaacson to write his biography as he has also written the best-selling biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein. So, the biography of the founder of Apple had to be written by someone who knew his job and Walter Isaac was the right man for it.
Book Overview
Writing the biography of Steve Jobs was not easy. As we say-“Rome was not built in a day” just like that, the book was not written in just a week like “The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho” was written, neither it was written in a month or two.
Finally published on October 24th, 2011, it took over two years and more than 40 interviews with Steve Jobs in order to make this book and get an astounding outcome. Not just the interviews with Steve Jobs have made this book what it is, there were so many more things involved.
There were more than a hundred family members who were interviewed just for the sole purpose of writing this book. colleagues, rivals, and friends too were interviewed and asked questions about Steve Jobs. And this is how Walter Isaacson got superficial access and look into the life of Apple’s CEO.
If there was one thing the author, Walter Isaacson was clear about in his head, it was that he was not going to “sugarcoat” Steve Jobs’ flaws and wouldn’t make him appear flawless for, there is nothing like that.
The total page count of the book is 448 with 42 chapters in total- each chapter depicting a new Steve Jobs!
After two years of hard work on the book “Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson“, the book released after 19 days of Jobs’ demise which was on 05 October 2011.
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson | Book Summary
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
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson is a long-life synopsis of Steve Jobs- this is a book with crazy details and insights. Summing up someone’s life into a few hundred pages is not an easy job to do but bow down to the author here.
There was nothing this book did not touch- from how he was born, abandoned, and then adopted, to how he grew up, to every girlfriend he had, to how apple started, then how Steve left it and started Pixar then again joined Apple back.
Everything is in the book in deep details.
Steve Jobs is said to be one of the best CEOs in history, it was under his guidance Apple emerged as one of the leading brands in the communication and software industries. He was the one who was absolutely product orientated. However, it did cost him being a little hard on employees who had to work on crazy deadlines but the result was worth it.
Not only Steve Jobs but also the book has described every creation of apple in a detailed manner that someone who owns an iPhone, iPad, iPod, or MacBook would be damn fascinated to read this book for sure because it has described the creation of each and every product in details.
Steve Jobs, a name so simple, a life so complex but worth it.
The life of Steve Jobs has been always filled with challenges, life as a whole for him was a challenge which he overcame with flying colors!
Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.
Steve Jobs
What to learn from Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson?
No, it is not just innovation that you can learn from Jobs or this book. There is a lot more and here are some of the quotes I loved from the book, especially the PowerPoint quote :
- One way to remember who you are is to remember who your heroes are.
- If you act like you can do something, then it will work.
- If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things – that’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more.
- People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint.
- Some people say, “Give the customers what they want.” But that’s not my approach. Our 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!'” People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.
My thoughts on the book | Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson Book Review
As I had already said, when you want to learn about something, learn from the expert, and for business, no one can be better than Steve Jobs -building a whole brand like apple is not a cakewalk.
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson is a great book, it took me back to the time when Apple was nothing more than a fruit, which if consumed once a day, just kept doctors away. The journey was incredible and topsy-turvy to read.
I am a bit inclined towards technology so the parts where the early apple products were being developed have intrigued me a lot more towards the brand because at this moment I do not own a single apple product but reading about how they were developed definitely has encouraged me to some level to buy a product!
What I liked the most about this book was the way how it will tell you on the face that Steve Jobs did not care about his employees but always wanted the best in product- I’m not saying this is a great habit but I would totally want to be like that someday!
Ratings for Steve jobs by Walter Isaacson
I would happily give this book a 4/5 star ratings!
The book is commendable however, the fact that this book was more than 400 pages just took me off the hook a little but I couldn’t be more happy when I finished reading it.
Conclusion | Should or Should you not read “Steve jobs by Walter Isaacson“?
There is no reason that you should not read Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. I know I started off this review by saying “if you want to learn about business” but here, I would like to say that this book is more than that- this is innovation, this is the dream, this book is a complete opposite of what I thought it would be and I AM NOT COMPLAINING ABOUT IT. You should definitely read this book!
