Steve Jobs

March 5, 2012
Steve Jobs believed he was successful at changing the personal computer, music, and publishing industries because he “saw the intersection of art and science and business,” according to Ziller’s fairly glowing biography. Working from such sources as Apple product launch events, Jobs’s 2005 commencement address at Stanford University, and Walter Isaacson’s biography for adults, Ziller presents Jobs as a charismatic genius whose passion and perseverance sometimes drove him to overbearing behavior. The inspiring and now familiar tale of how Jobs and Steve Wozniak cobbled together Apple Computer in the Jobs family garage is, of course, one of the linchpins, along with anecdotes about Jobs’s lifestyle quirks and background on his strained interpersonal relationships. But Ziller keeps the momentum going as Jobs moves through setbacks and triumphs in his work life at Apple, as well as other companies such as NeXT and Pixar, detailing innovations that are now part of consumers’ everyday lives. A chronology of Jobs’s milestones and a time line of his career appear along with quotes by and about the subject. A bibliography and source notes are included. Ages 8–12.

March 1, 2012

Gr 5-7-Drawing on the posthumous "authorized" biography of Jobs as well as an array of older print and online publications, Ziller presents a glowing portrait of the late great entrepreneur as a technological visionary who stood and directed traffic "at the intersection of science and art." Though making reference, in downplayed ways, to his rocky personal relationships and abrasive behavior toward employees, the author shines a more direct light on her subject's business triumphs, his manic focus, and appreciative comments by those who knew and worked with him. Closing sections of Jobsian sound bites and passages from various eulogies extend the adulation. Though Ziller sometimes exaggerates (Jobs did not "start" Pixar, though he certainly did transform it), in general, she sticks to the documentary evidence, serving up a coherent, if somewhat simplistic, picture of a man whose influence on American business and the technological revolution would be hard to overestimate.-John Peters, formerly at New York Public Library

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