The Second Coming of Steve Jobs
Author: Alan Deutschman
List Price: $14.95
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ISBN: 0767904338
Publisher: Broadway (11 September, 2001)
Sales Rank: 12,035
Average Customer Rating: 3.76 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 5 out of 5
insightful and fair portrait
This book is a very compelling read--fast-paced and full of colorful and revealing anecdotes. It portrays Steve Jobs as a fascinatingly complex figure, someone who is highly intelligent, creative, passionate, and inspiring but whose rage for perfection leads him to verbally abuse and humiliate his colleagues and friends and to act in self-destructive ways. I thought the writer did a good job of showing the complex facets of this extraordinary personality. The book seems fair and well reported. I've been put off by other authors who have been blindly worshipful of Silicon Valley moguls ("eBoys" and "New New Thing" come to mind) so it's refreshing that this book gives a more realistic look at what really happens at high-tech companies. I was especially interested by the eye-opening look behind the scenes at the Pixar movie studio, where the author reveals that Jobs lost a power struggle with John Lasseter for creative control. And the sections about Jobs's return to Apple have some fascinating close-up details, like the scene of Jobs crying when he first viewed the "Think Different" ads or the time when Jobs spied on the private e-mail of a mid-level employee. Overall, a very enjoyable read.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Better than I ever expected!
I am unabashedly one of the (until recently) Macintosh Faithful, having at one time printed my own business cards with "Mac Evangilist" as my title. I would approach customers in the Macitosh section of CompUSA or Computer City and see if they had questions (only while i was there already, mind you!). I have waxed lovingly on the virtues of Macintosh to all my friends and family, and longed for a NextStation, if only as a hobby machine.Needless to say, I am a died-in-the-wool Steve Jobs fan. In all fairness, the amount of information out there about the MAN is thin and disreputiable. His charm, 'reality distortion field' and his public dressing-down of employees are the stuff of legend, but little concrete has been found about the MAN.
A few years ago I read another biography, called (i think) "Steve Jobs and the NeXT Best Thing". It was a one-sided, blistering account of every failure Jobs made with his founding of Next, and seemingly NO good choices were made.
Picking up this book, The Second Coming, I was expecting more of the same. What I found was a fair, inciteful, and only slightly more vague than it could have been. The writer does seem to set the reader up as to many of Steve's strong points, and then makes a point to tear down Steve and portray him as almost an unfeeling monster. The narrative is a gentle roller-coaster ride between these two extremes, giving the impression that Steve is either a child, or possibly suffering from multiple personality disorder.
One thing to note is that Steve Jobs does not approve of this book, and as I understand sued to stop publication. Needless to say, HIS point of view and interviews with him are not part of the makeup of the book.
Overall, I find this to be an excellent, information packed book on one of the FEW businessmen I would consider a 'hero' to me. However, without Steve's direct input, this book comes across VERY strongly as a coloring-book picture colored from the OUTSIDE up to the outline of the man, not filling in the man himself.
Rating: 2 out of 5
Comes Up Far Too Short
I waited for this book to come out for a long time. An accurate and thorough description of the evolution of Steve Jobs the person, and Steve Jobs the professional is compelling and deserves a lot of detailed and objective research. Jobs is a polarizing subject and figure, and faithful biography should be treated with extreme seriousness. Unfortunately, I found this book quite incomplete, and perhaps a bit biased as well. There seems to be a lot of folks in the journalistic and literary community who emphasize the negative instead of the objective regarding Jobs.
Simply put, we need a bigger effort from another author following the excellent "The Journey is the Reward" by Jeffrey Young.
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