Steve Jobs (Walter Isaacson)

This is the biography of a man who was brilliant, arrogant, sensitive, brutal, charismatic, delusional...a man of contradictions. There is little doubt that Apple is successful because of Steve Jobs. It is also true that he hurt the people around him, mostly deliberately, often with no real reason. He saw the world, including people, in absolute black and white terms: everything, and everyone, was either intolerably awful or amazingly wonderful, often alternately within hours. He had an overarching vision of technology, believing throughout his career in the importance of controlling the user's experience from end to end. He also meddled in every tiny detail of his products, from the precise shade of blue for the shell of the iMac to the finish on the screws inside the unit. Love him or hate him (or both), it is hard to read this story without sheer fascination.