Blurb: Brent Schlender is an enormously respected journalist, writing about technology and Silicon Valley over the past three decades, and in May 2012, his Fast Company cover story about Steve Jobs, entitled “The Lost Tapes of Steve Jobs,” broke, spawning hundreds of articles and a feeding frenzy for the book rights. Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography, Steve Jobs, was a landmark publication that sold millions of copies and has been on the New York Times bestseller list for two years. But the most interesting years of Jobs’s life are shortchanged, as many people refused to talk, because Jobs was still alive and because of the extraordinary haste in finishing the book in order to get it out immediately after Jobs’s death.
Apple devotees and Silicon Valley tech readers will be dazzled by the array of stories from people who worked alongside him. Becoming Steve Jobs is a vividly dramatic and high-octane biography that reveals Jobs at his most colourful and volatile.
This book satisfies a place on my 2016 Read Harder Challenge being hosted by Book Riot. I know its well into 2017, but I’m no quitter!
5 stars
I loved this book. It’s not generally in my wheelhouse of genres that I read but it’s part of my read harder challenge from last year. This book took me about 6 weeks to get through. Partly because its an audio book and I only listen to those on my commute to work and partly because I had to take A LOT of breaks. It was very monotone and linear, not really what I’m used to.
However, the reporting on his life and all the interviews that were quoted were awesome. I felt like I got to know him on a more intimate level. I had no idea how much of an asshole he was. LOL, and arrogant, my god he was very much about his ideas and had no qualms about telling anyone what his opinion of them was. And he was so damn impulsive, he would judge a person on the first impression and wouldn’t let it go. All faults IMO, but when you are on the outside looking in. And only focusing on his career, it was quite fascinating. I mean, I could never have worked for him, but hey, nobody’s perfect. I don’t mean to say that he was a devil or anything, but the biography didn’t hold anything back in regards to his professional life.
This book was very in depth about his career, and since I remember most of it growing up, I got a little nostalgic while listening. Especially, when he purchased Pixar, and then eventually sold it. Or when he came back to Apple and slowly turned it into one the most profitable and recognized brands in the world. But I think the thing that stands out most to me were his values.
They spoke a great deal about how Steve thought the past was the past and you couldn’t change it, so instead you needed to learn from it. And how he looked in the mirror and asked himself if I died today, would he have accomplished everything he wanted? Or how he was constantly asking himself, “What comes next?” Constantly looking forward, I really liked that. I do that to. Don’t dwell on the past, always move forward. These are things I can relate to and I found that very interesting that we shared some of the same views on life. When his sickness and eventual death was covered, I actually started crying. He was a giant in the PC world and I wish I would have read this book sooner.
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