he was a difficult man
How is the man?
There's plenty of reviews  here already, so I'll focus in on the bottom line for me: Although this book gives short shrift to certain aspects of Jobs' personal life, and so is really a partial biography in that sense, from a business perspective, it is excellent, and a book anyone in business should read. The insight into how Jobs made decisions, how he pulled off the deals he pulled off, his successes and failures, and how they both shaped Apple, are amazing. His attention to detail, design, and the customer experience, and his merging of intuition, art, and technology, are stunning. It's a good read too - he was a difficult man, with the temperment and sensibility of an artist, not an engineer, which makes for good drama in the narrative of his life.This is also an amazing historical account of the forces that have changed our world in the last 30 years. From the birth of personal computing, through the internet, to mobile devices, the individuals such as Jobs that drove innovation during this time have been the true 'masters of the universe.' The other players that Jobs dealt with - Bill Gates of course, as well as the founders of most of the major technological players of our time - are all featured here, and it makes for a fascinating tale. I was actually quite fascinated, and in the end touched, by the relationship between Gates and Jobs, perhaps the two individuals most responsible for the nature of our world today (one could argue, far more so than any political or social leader during this time, when one considers how technology has transformed world politics as well, in terms of our global connectivity, Twitter, etc.)I would have personally loved more on his personal life. For example, his love of Zen Buddhism (an interest of mine) and how it impacted his design aesthetic is covered, but the exact nature of his practice and the teachers he studied with are not. His marriage and family life are barely covered, although of course by Jobs' own admission, he worked all the time and missed a lot of family life, so perhaps the percentage of space it is given in the book is proportional to the time he gave it in his life. But really, this is a business biography - a record of how he built Apple and Pixar, and all the products they spawned. And Isaacson definitely has a perspective - Jobs saw himself as a visionary at the intersection of the arts and technology, and creator of the most influential company on earth, and Isaacson grants him that legacy. 