Steve Jobs’s Biography Expected On November 21

Along with blabbing the release date of the book, retailer Barnes & Noble has also done us a favour by sharing the book cover (pictured) and a description of the 448 pages, as scribed by his official biographer, Walter Isaacson.

Jobs reportedly gave Isaacson a long leash to work on, with the full book description (below) quoting Jobs as saying “I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, such as getting my girlfriend pregnant when I was 23 and the way I handled that, he said. But I don’t have any skeletons in my closet that can’t be allowed out.”

Over 40 interviews were granted by Jobs to Isaacson, along with interviews by family, friends, and hopefully co-workers too. The more I think about the biography, the more I’m pleased Isaacson renamed it Steve Jobs: A Biography, from iSteve: The Book of Jobs. And the four months’ early release date is a Christmas treat, for sure — pre-order it now for $US20.40. [Barnes & Noble via All Things D via 9to5Mac]

Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues this book chronicles the rollercoaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionised six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing. It is also a book about innovation. 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. He knew that the best way to create value in the 21st century was to connect creativity with technology, so he built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering. Although Jobs cooperated with this book, 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 and instead encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly even foes, former girlfriends, and colleagues he had once fired or infuriated. “I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, such as getting my girlfriend pregnant when I was 23 and the way I handled that,” he said. “But I don’t have any skeletons in my closet that can’t be allowed out.” Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. Likewise, 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. He was not a model boss or human being, tidily packaged for emulation. Driven by demons, he could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple’s hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is thus both instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values.