---
title: "Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson"
description: "Takeaway: It seem a rule of life that great people are also greatly broken people. Steve Jobs is one of the few books that I have read recently that is being widely read by a number of people in my..."
url: https://bookwi.se/jobs/
date: 2013-04-06
modified: 2026-07-15
author: "Adam Shields"
categories: ["Book Reviews"]
type: post
lang: en
---

# Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

![Steve Jobs](https://bookwi.se/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/cover-5557.jpg)**Takeaway: It seem a rule of life that great people are also greatly broken people.**

Steve Jobs is one of the few books that I have read recently that is being widely read by a number of people in my life.  I keep asking people what they think about it and while there are a range of responses, no one I have asked is short on opinions.

Isaacson has painted a compelling story.  I read his earlier book on Einstein, and while I enjoyed it and learned a lot, Jobs’ biography is even more compelling. I am not sure why that is true.  Part of the reason is that I have lived part of Jobs’s life.  He is only 17 years older than I am.  I have always been interested in computers but always on the PC side of things.  Then I bought an iPad.  And then a MacBook Air.  Then replaced my iPad with an iPad 2 (and then went back to the iPad 1).  Now I have an iPhone (as does my wife).

Reading this book, you have a hard time not appreciating (and desiring) Apple products.  This book is almost as much about Apple as it is about Jobs.  I think it is a bit too much about Apple especially the last third of the book that wants to tell us every little movement that Apple made (it did not need a whole section on iCloud or the problems with the iPhone 4 antenna).  But Apple was Jobs’ life, so maybe that is the way it had to be.

One twitter friend said this was one of the saddest books he had ever read.  I understand his point, but I do not agree.  Tragic, yes; sad, no.  It is tragic because Jobs’ ability to ignore what he did not want to believe.  This me