"Steve Jobs"

by Walter Isaacson

In December Walter Isaacson author of the bestselling biography ‘Steve Jobs’ came to Kansas City through the efforts of Rainy Day Books. During the presentation he covered many aspects of Steve Jobs’ personality (most of which I was already aware) however when he revealed that Jobs on a regular basis parked in handicap parking there was an audible gasp throughout the audience. Listen, people might disagree on politics, religion, and what local restaurant serves the best burgers, but EVERYONE believes parking in handicap parking when you yourself aren’t is eighteen degrees of plain wrong!

Isaacson emphasized that Jobs was a man who didn’t believe the rules applied to him. Ergo he created, and later headed, a company that developed some of the greatest devices that have emerged on the world scene in the last century. The downside to the whole special snowflake philosophy is that Jobs parked in handicap spaces and drove his car around Palo Alto, California without license plates.

I confess that I jumped on the Apple bandwagon only recently, but once aboard it has been a true sparkly vampire Team Edward love affair. I got an iPhone early last fall when the 4S was being released and the 3G versions were being discounted. Since technology and I have at times had a rocky relationship I was uncertain how I would feel about my new device. In the past I always thought of my mobile phone as a necessary evil. However within hours after being introduced to my iPhone, Mr. Bojangles, I was downloading games and music. I was giddy with the power and knowledge that I would never be bored again…as long as my battery was charged. Now every night I make sure my phone is tucked into its charger and it is the first thing I reach for upon waking because finding out the time and temperature through any other means seems passé. Therefore when Steve Jobs died on October 5, 2011 I felt a pinch over losing someone who I had only recently learned to admire.

While in the early stages of writing ‘Einstein: His Life and Universe’ and promoting ‘Ben Franklin: An American Life’ in 2004 Jobs approached Isaacson on writing his biography. They shared a joke about the hubris of Jobs suggesting himself as the natural successor to Einstein and Franklin. Isaacson proposed that since Jobs was, in what Isaacson presumed, the middle of his career that a biography might be best saved for two decades in the future. What he did not know was that Jobs was on the verge of his first operation for pancreatic cancer. In 2009 Jobs’ wife, Laurene Powell, contacted Isaacson telling him that if he was still interesting in doing the book that the time to begin was then.

Jobs agreed to over forty interviews along with encouraging all family members, friends, and adversaries alike to give their true feelings and opinions. Jobs had no control of the content and declined to read the book. The only thing he suggested was a change of cover. As proven in the past, his eye was correct in choosing the Albert Watson photograph (taken in 2006) instead of the image approved by Simon and Schuster. The title was originally proposed ‘iSteve: The Book of Jobs’ but thankfully Isaacson’s wife and daughter talked him out of that on the basis that they thought “it was too cutesy.” The original publishing date was set for March of 2012, but because of Jobs’ ill health it was pushed up to November of 2011. The book was then released on October 24, 2011 prompted by Jobs’ death.

After reading ‘Steve Jobs’ I’m left with a major admiration (outside of all of his accomplishments in technology and business) for Jobs’ planning and bravery in taking the vacuum he knew his death would create and filling it with his words and the thoughts of others about him. He knew after the eulogies were given people would start talking about how he could be verbally abusive, brattish, unnecessarily rude, and cruel.

One of the many geniuses of Jobs was pursuing the idea that what a company needs to do is anticipate what people will want and need in the future. He never used market research because he believed the masses don’t really know what they want until innovation shows them.

I think it was this sort of intuition which led him to work with a biographer when he was in and out of ill health. Even though he didn’t technically control the information, he exerted control by being interviewed. By giving Isaacson the names of who to interview he could respond to their feelings during his interview process, and by timing the biography to come out while his death was still in (if you will) the Honeymoon period of awe and praise he laid out all of his accomplishments and turpitudes on the table. Granted, I do not know if he was the one who encouraged pushing up the release dates, but from a marketplace perspective it was BAM!: Steve Jobs has died…then less than a month later the definitive biography about him was released. It was as if to insure the conversation wouldn’t skew negatively with revelations (Gawker, a website that Isaacson referenced in the biography, ran this article two days after Jobs’ death) he needed to do something big. Jobs knew his sins (and parking habits) would all be brought to light so the best way to help protect his legacy (both as a person and the company he created) was to explain who he was and why he did what he did – the good, the bad, the innovative and to a lesser degree the ugly.

‘Steve Jobs’ is an important book which will likely become more important as time moves on and future generations examine this era’s history. Other biographies will be written about Jobs but none of their authors will ever have the access Isaacson had to the source. They may listen to the interviews Isaacson conducted (assuming they were recorded) and they may examine different facets of the man and his creations, but the time for posing questions to Jobs is over.

One of the most striking things about the biography is that it feels as if it is Jobs' final product. His choice of photo is now iconic (as I’m sure intuitively he knew it would be) even the paper the book cover is made of makes a statement that other covers of biographies do not (I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t the same paper that covers boxes iPads come in). Jobs was far from perfect, obviously none of us are, however despite his imperfections and belief that the rules didn’t apply to him, I found his biography inspirational. He took his impending death and made it a dais to record his view of the world for prosperity. And although Isaacson doesn’t cover it, I oddly found comfort as he transitioned from this life to the next. His biological sister, writer Mona Simpson (Jobs was adopted and met Simpson when they were both adults) reported his final words were, “Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.”

Reviewed by Lisa Westerfield