Candid Jobs biography shoots to #1 on Amazon best-seller list

The 630 page authorised Steve Jobs biography, written by former Time editor Walter Isaacson is already number one on Amazon.com’s best seller list.

The biography, simply called Steve Jobs, provides insights into the mind of the Apple visionary, as well as candid details of his personal life.

Isaacson wrote the biography after conducting a series of interviews with Jobs and with over 100 family members friends, business rivals and colleagues since 2009.

Publication of the biography was initially scheduled for early 2012 but was moved up in the wake of Jobs’ death.

There is, perhaps, a hint of irony in the books position, given that Amazon spent the last months of Jobs’ life liberating itself from Apple’s App Store.

The book chronicles everything from Jobs dropping out of college and building computers with Stephen Wozniak in the Jobs family garage to his acrimonious axing from Apple and eventual return.

Jobs’s second act at Apple, which began in 1996, was arguably the most creative time of his life, a period during which he revamped the Macintosh computer line and gave the world the iPod, iTunes, the iPhone, and the iPad.

The book provides intimate insights into the private life of the extremely secretive Jobs as father, family man, friend, and boss.

The insights are not, however, always flattering.

“Jobs at times seemed driven by demons,” Isaacson writes. “He could be charismatic, even mesmerising, but also cold and brutal.”

Isaacson attributes this occasional callousness to Jobs’ drive for perfection.

“I don’t think I run roughshod over people, but if something sucks, I tell people to their face,” Jobs tells Isaacson. “It’s my job to be honest.

“I know what I’m talking about, and I usually turn out to be right.”

Isaacson said that while Jobs could be cutting and dismissive “dozens of the colleagues whom Jobs most abused ended their litany of horror stories by saying that he got them to do things they never dreamed possible.”

Isaacson’s assessment of Jobs is backed up by the Apple visionary’s wife Laurene Powell. The former Goldman Sachs trader married Jobs in 1991 and had three children with him.

“There are parts of his life and personality that are extremely messy, and that’s the truth,” Powell told Isaacson. “You shouldn’t whitewash it… I’d like to see that it’s all told truthfully.”

The book also reveals how resistant Jobs was to mainstream treatment when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

According to the book, he ignored the pleas of his doctors and those closest to him by attempting to treat the disease with a vegan diet, acupuncture and herbal remedies.

“I really didn’t want them to open up my body, so I tried to see if a few other things would work,” Jobs told Isaacson.

The book ends with Jobs attempting to define his legacy to his biography.

“My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products,” Jobs said.

“Everything else was secondary.”