First authorised Steve Jobs biography set for Christmas launch

The release date of the first authorised biography of Apple co-founder and famous recluse Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs: A Biography, has been shifted up to hit stores in time for Christmas.

The biography, penned by former CCN chairman Walter Isaacson, had been slated for release in March of 2012 but will now be available in November, publishers Simon & Schuster said.

Isaacson has a distinguished resume as a biographer having previously penned well received biographies of Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, and Henry Kissinger.

Describing the book, Simon & Schuster states, “At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, and when societies around the world are trying to build digital-age economies, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination”.

The 448-page book, which had previously been titled iSteve, is based on more than 40 interviews with Jobs over a period of two years. In addition, over 100 family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues were interviewed for further research according to Simon & Schuster.

Jobs is infamous for tightly managing his public persona, parsing himself out to the “Mac-Faithful” in highly staged, managed means such as his rock-star turns at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers’ Conferences.

The publishing house is clear that although Jobs cooperated throughout the process of the book’s writing, he in no way influenced the final product.

…he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted.

In a move which the New York Times described as an “image-obsessed fit of pique”, Apple banished all books published by John Wiley & Sons when it arose that they were planning to publish an unauthorised biography, iCon: Steve Jobs, The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business, in 2005.

Image: Apple