Steve Jobs – Walter Isaacson

Although written in close collaboration with Jobs himself and published soon after his death, this is no hagiography. Straightforward in describing his shortcomings in areas such as parenting and personal hygiene, Isaacson successfully shows how the personality traits that lead to these problems conversely lead to the passion for design and bull-headed perfectionism that make Apple so successful.

There is a fascinating thread about his relationship with his great rival Bill Gates. I must say I am philosophically closer to the Microsoft man in terms of open source and philanthropy, but the fact that our household now contains 2 iPods, 2 iPhones and an iPod pretty well speaks for itself.

There’s nothing here on the working conditions of the Chinese workers who actually put the things together. Perhaps this is one subject the author dared not broach?