Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different: A Biography
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About this ebook
A riveting biography of the groundbreaking innovator who was a giant in the worlds of computing, music, filmmaking, design, smart phones, and more. A finalist for the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award!
"Your time is limited. . . . have the courage to follow your heart and intuition." —Steve Jobs
From the start, his path was never predictable. Steve Jobs was given up for adoption at birth, dropped out of college after one semester, and at the age of twenty, created Apple in his parents' garage with his friend Steve Wozniack.
Then came the core and hallmark of his genius—his exacting moderation for perfection, his counterculture life approach, and his level of taste and style that pushed all boundaries. A devoted husband, father, and Buddhist, he battled cancer for over a decade, became the ultimate CEO, and made the world want every product he touched, from the Macintosh to the iPhone, from iTunes and the iPod to the Macbook.
Critically acclaimed author Karen Blumenthal takes us to the core of this complicated and legendary man while simultaneously exploring the evolution of computers. Framed by Jobs' inspirational Stanford commencement speech and illustrated throughout with black and white photos, this is the story of the man who changed our world.
Read more thrilling nonfiction by Karen Blumenthal:
Hillary Rodham Clinton: A Woman Living History (A YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award Finalist)
Bootleg: Murder, Moonshine, and the Lawless Years of Prohibition
Tommy: The Gun That Changed America
Praise for Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different: A Biography:
“This is a smart book about a smart subject by a smart writer.” —Booklist, starred review
“Students who know Steve Jobs only through Apple's iTunes, iPhones, and iPads will have their eyes opened by this accessible and well-written biography.” —VOYA
“An engaging and intimate portrait. Few biographies for young readers feel as relevant and current as this one does.” —The Horn Book Magazine
“A perceptive, well-wrought picture of an iconic figure.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Blumenthal crafts an insightful, balanced portrait.” —Publishers Weekly
Karen Blumenthal
Karen Blumenthal (1959-2020) was a financial journalist and editor whose career included five years with The Dallas Morning News and twenty-five with The Wall Street Journal—where her work helped earn the paper a Pulitzer Prize for its breaking news coverage of the September 11, 2001 attacks—before becoming an award-winning children’s non-fiction book writer. Three of her books, Hillary Rodham Clinton: A Woman Living History, Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different, and Bootleg: Murder, Moonshine, and the Lawless Years of Prohibition, were finalists for the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults Award. Karen was also the author of Six Days in October: The Stock Market Crash of 1929 (named a Sibert Honor Book), Let Me Play: The Story of Title IX (winner of the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award), Tommy: The Gun That Changed America, Bonnie and Clyde: The Making of a Legend, and Jane Against the World: Roe v. Wade and the Fight for Reproductive Rights.
Read more from Karen Blumenthal
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Reviews for Steve Jobs
66 ratings8 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5An extensive and readable biography of one of the world's biggest technology innovators.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Book: Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different Author: Karen Blumenthal Characters: Steve Jobs Setting: San Francisco (1950’s to present day) Theme: Ambition and process of growing up “different”Genre: Non-fiction Audience: ages 16 +Curriculum: Awesome book to use if covering a section in history on historical figures. Also a great book for English curriculum or outside STAR reading. I can see this being used to see the influences of historical figures and collaborating on what makes historical figures so “different” and what made them historical? How can historical figures like the Hero’s Journey theme we see in stories? Summary: The infamous Steve Jobs was given up for adoption at birth, dropped out of college after one semester, and at the age of twenty, created Apple in his parents' garage with his friend Steve Wozniack. Not a typical beginning for a man who would eventually change the world with his innovation and computer technology. Then came the hallmark of his genius-Apple-his exacting moderation for perfection, his counterculture life approach, and his level of taste and style that pushed all boundaries. Broken down into three sections to take the reader through Jobs’ life, we see his beginnings, the middle of his life that made him famous, ingenious. Lastly, his legacy and his exit as the best CEO of one of the top companies in the world. Personal Response: The book is brown down into three sections that seem to categorically depict the stages of Jobs’ life. The chapters titled to share the what’s to come in those ages of his life. There is also a timeline and black and white photos of him and his family to give us a name to the faces of the people who played intricate roles in his life.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This is a very accessible account of the life of Steve Jobs. The author uses Jobs’ memorable Stanford graduation speech to set up the book and flesh out the narrative. I enjoyed the bubble inserts which were asides or in-depth looks at tangents. Even though I have been reading about Steve Jobs for decades now I was surprised by how much I didn't know.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A good balance of presenting the myth and the man. Well researched and well designed. Solid read.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I picked this book up during our vacation. I'd wanted to read a book about Jobs for awhile now, and just couldn't bring myself to do it, for some reason. Maybe because my son is often making disparaging remarks about how stingy Jobs was, and unreasonable... and nasty... um, well, all of that is true! But despite Jobs personality flaws, he was a fascinating character. Creative, driven, obsessive and brilliant. I like reading about quirky people who manage to be successful even though they are abrasive and lack social graces. And have weird habits. Blumenthal writes about him well, using plenty of dialogue and scenarios to give you a good picture of what Jobs was really like. I loved seeing the old photographs of him too, and reading about how the various Apple products started out. And Blumenthal was kind when it came to writing about technology; she didn't get too complicated and so it was easy for the average person to understand. Walter Isaacson wrote a much lengthier authorized bio of Jobs, but this one was perfect for me.. Good for those of us who are just a bit curious and don't need 600 pages to learn about Jobs.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I liked learning about the wonderful and hard life of Steve Jobs this book has changed my whole perspective of Steve Jobs.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Steve Jobs’ life wasn’t as normal as it may have been expected, having been adopted at birth, dropping out of college, experimenting with different substances, and wandering New Delhi in seek for some wisdom while being just a young adult. Though his life wasn’t the easiest, Steve’s ambition toward greatness led him picking up what he left in his old company and into becoming one of the most successful CEOs of our time. Steve Jobs showed that even though many challenges in life may seem unremitting, never giving up will truly be worth it at the end of everything. The main part that I really enjoyed of how the book was led is that Karen Blumenthal drove Steve Jobs’ life based on his speech in a 2005 Stanford University graduation. Although I thought Steve Jobs would be a very different person basing from how great of an innovator he was, its a good feeling to know that Jobs was not all that far apart from us.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I'm not sure what the author's purpose in writing this book was. It was a hodge-podge of biography, company history/ politics, computer science, and idol worship. I didn't feel like I had any more insight into how Jobs "thought different." And it felt like large chunks of his life were omitted or minimized (e.g., despite the idea that Jobs's relationship with Bill Gates was important, Gates was mentioned only in passing, we saw very little of the "feud" or even understood how they knew each other). I understand that you can't record a whole life in a book but you must be thoughtful in what you omit and still tell a coherent, meaningful story. Given the references cited, the author clearly consulted a plethora of resources but the final product felt piece-meal and lacked a solid point of view or theme. (Yes, even non-fiction should have a theme.)
Book preview
Steve Jobs - Karen Blumenthal
Introduction
Three stories
On a warm June day in 2005, Steve Jobs went to his first college graduation—as the commencement speaker. The billionaire founder and leader of Apple Computer wasn’t just another stuffed-shirt businessman. Though only fifty years old, the college dropout was a technology rock star, a living legend to millions of people around the world.
In his early twenties, Jobs almost single-handedly introduced the world to the first computer that could sit on your desk and actually do something all by itself. He revolutionized music and the ears of a generation with a spiffy little music player called the iPod and a wide selection of songs at the iTunes store. He funded and nurtured a company called Pixar that made the most amazing computer-animated movies—Toy Story, Cars, and Finding Nemo—bringing to life imaginary characters like never before.
Though he was neither an engineer nor a computer geek, he helped create one gotta-have-it product after another by always designing it with you and me, the actual users, in mind. Unknown to those listening to him that day, more insanely awesome technology was in the works, including the iPhone, which would put much of the power of a computer neatly into the palm of your hand. The father of four would be repeatedly compared with the inventor Thomas Edison and auto magnate Henry Ford, who both introduced affordable, life-changing conveniences that transformed the way Americans lived.
Yet for all his successes, Jobs also endured some very public failures. When he was thirty years old, he was summarily stripped of his duties at Apple for being too disruptive and difficult. He set out to build another computer company and missed the mark, blowing through millions of dollars of investors’ money. He could be volatile, screaming at associates, competitors, and reporters. He sometimes cried when things didn’t go his way and he regularly took credit for the ideas of others. He could be both charming and gratingly abrasive, sensitive and stunningly mean-spirited.
Some parts of his life sounded like a fairy tale right out of the movies: There was a promise made when he was a baby, romances, remarkable rebounds, and riches almost too big to be believed. Other parts were so messy and ugly, so very human, that they would never be considered family entertainment. He was both loved and hated, intensely admired and widely dismissed. People described him with the strongest words: Visionary. Showman. Artist. Tyrant. Genius. Jerk.
Wearing blue jeans and sandals under his graduation-day robe, Jobs stepped up to the microphone to speak in the same way he did just about everything: with intensity and passion. In a short speech to the twenty-three thousand students, parents, and friends gathered, he very publicly shared very personal insights into his own life.
Today I want to tell you three stories from my life,
he said.
No more. Just three stories that defined an amazing life and provided a guide designed for people at the beginning of their adult lives. To understand who Steve Jobs was and what he became, it helps to start there, with the first of those three stories.
Part 1
The journey is the reward.
Steve Jobs (far left) hamming it up with school friends in the seventh grade.
1
Seeds
Steve Jobs’s first story involved connecting dots, and it began with a most unusual promise.
Joanne Schieble was just twenty-three and attending graduate school in Wisconsin when she learned she was pregnant. Her father didn’t approve of her relationship with a Syrian-born graduate student, and social customs in the 1950s frowned on a woman having a child outside of marriage. To avoid the glare, Schieble moved to San Francisco and was taken in by a doctor who took care of unwed mothers and helped arrange adoptions.
Originally, a lawyer and his wife agreed to adopt the new baby. But when the child was born on February 24, 1955, they changed their minds.
Clara and Paul Jobs, a modest San Francisco couple with some high school education, had been waiting for a baby. When the call came in the middle of the night, they jumped at the chance to adopt the newborn, and they named him Steven Paul.
Schieble wanted her child to be adopted by college-educated parents. Before the adoption could be finalized, however, she learned that neither parent had a college degree. She balked and only agreed to complete the adoption a few months later, when my parents promised that I would go to college,
Jobs said.
Signing on to the hope of a bright future for their baby, the Jobs family settled in, adopting a daughter, Patty, a couple of years later. Little Steve proved to be a curious child, and a challenging one to rear. He put a bobby pin into an electrical outlet, winning a trip to the emergency room for a burned hand. He got into ant poison, requiring yet another trip to the hospital to have his stomach pumped. To keep Steve busy when he got up before the rest of the household, his parents bought him a rocking horse, a record player, and some Little Richard records. He was so difficult as a toddler, his mother once confided, that she wondered if she had made a mistake adopting him.
When Steve was five, his father, Paul, was transferred to Palo Alto, about forty-five minutes south of San Francisco. After serving in the Coast Guard during World War II, Paul had worked as a machinist and used-car salesman, and now was working for a finance company collecting bad debts. In his free time, he fixed up used cars and sold them for a profit, money that would go to Steve’s future college fund.
Patty Jobs, freshman yearbook photo, 1972.
The area south of San Francisco was largely undeveloped then and dotted with apricot and prune orchards. The family bought a house in Mountain View, and as Paul put together his workshop in the garage, he set aside a part of it, telling his son, Steve, this is your workbench now.
He taught Steve how to use a hammer and gave him a set of smaller tools. Over the years, Jobs remembered, his dad spent a lot of time with me … teaching me how to build things, how to take things apart, put things back together.
His father’s careful craftsmanship and commitment to the finest details made a deep impression. He was a sort of genius with his hands. He can fix anything and make it work and take any mechanical thing apart and get it back together,
Jobs told an interviewer in 1985. His father also stressed the importance of doing things right. For instance, his son learned, When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back.
That was a lesson Jobs would apply over and over to new products from Apple. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through,
he said.
Clara supported her young son as well, babysitting the children of friends in the evenings to pay for swimming lessons. And because Steve was precocious and interested, she taught him to read, giving him a big head start at school.
Unfortunately for Steve, knowing how to read became something of a problem. Once in school, I really just wanted to do two things,
he remembered. I wanted to read books because I loved reading books and I wanted to go outside and chase butterflies.
What he didn’t want to do was follow instructions. He bucked at the structure of the school day and soon was bored with being in class. He felt different from his classmates.
When he was six or seven years old, he told the girl across the street that he was adopted. So does that mean your real parents didn’t want you?
she asked.
The innocent question hit him like a punch to the stomach, planting a frightening thought that had never occurred to him. He ran into his house, sobbing. His parents quickly moved to comfort him and shoot down that notion. They were very serious and looked me straight in the eye,
he said. They said, ‘We specifically picked you out.’
In fact, his parents thought he was very special—exceptionally bright, though also exceptionally strong-willed. Later, friends and colleagues would say that his drive and need for control grew out of a deep-rooted sense of abandonment. But he didn’t see it that way. Knowing I was adopted may have made me feel more independent, but I have never felt abandoned,
he told a biographer. I’ve always felt special. My parents made me feel special.
Some of his teachers, however, saw him more as a troublemaker than as a special kid. Jobs found school so dull and dreadful that he and a buddy got their biggest kicks out of causing havoc. Many of the kids rode bikes to school, locking them up in racks outside Monta Loma Elementary School, and in third grade, Jobs and his friend traded the combination to their bike locks with many of their classmates. Then one day, they went out and switched the locks all around. It took them until about ten o’clock that night to get all the bikes sorted out,
he recalled.
The worst behavior was reserved for the teacher. Jobs and his friend let a snake loose in the classroom and created a small explosion under her chair. We gave her a nervous twitch,
he said later.
He was sent home two or three times for his misbehavior, but he doesn’t remember being punished for it. Instead, his father defended him, telling teachers, If you can’t keep him interested, it’s your fault.
In fourth grade, he was rescued by a special teacher, Imogene Teddy
Hill, who kindly showered attention on him during a particularly trying time at home. Impressed by a neighbor who seemed to be making a successful living selling real estate, Paul Jobs went to school at night and earned a real-estate license. But his timing was bad and the demand for housing slumped just as he was trying to break into the business.
One day, Mrs. Hill asked her students, What is it that you don’t understand about the universe?
Young Jobs answered: I don’t understand why all of a sudden my dad is so broke.
Clara took a part-time job in the payroll department of a local company and the family took out a second loan on their house. For a year or so, money in the Jobs home was very tight.
Within a few weeks of having Jobs in her class, Mrs. Hill had sized up her unusual student. She offered Jobs a sweet bargain: If he could finish a math workbook on his own and get at least 80 percent right, she would give him five dollars and a giant lollipop.
I looked at her like, ‘Are you crazy, lady?’
Jobs said. But he took the challenge. Before long, his admiration and respect for Mrs. Hill were so great that he didn’t need bribes anymore.
She returned the admiration, providing her precocious student with a kit for making a camera by grinding his own lens. But that didn’t mean Jobs became an easy kid. Many years later, Mrs. Hill entertained some of Jobs’s coworkers by showing them a photo of her class on Hawaiian Day. Jobs was in the middle, wearing a Hawaiian shirt. But the photo didn’t tell the whole story: Jobs hadn’t actually worn a Hawaiian shirt that day—but he had managed to convince a classmate to give him the shirt off his back.
Calling the teacher one of the saints in my life,
Jobs said, I learned more that year than I think I learned in any year in school.
And he credits her with moving him onto the right path. I’m one hundred percent sure that if it hadn’t been for Mrs. Hill in fourth grade and a few others, I would absolutely have ended up in jail,
he said later.
With his interest in school reignited and his performance seemingly on track, Jobs was tested and scored so high that school officials recommended he skip a couple of grades. His parents agreed to let him skip just one.
Middle school was tougher academically and he still wanted to chase butterflies. A sixth-grade report called him an excellent reader,
but noted he has great difficulty motivating himself or seeing the purpose of studying reading.
He was also a discipline problem at times.
Seventh grade brought a much rougher crowd of classmates. Fights were common. Some students bullied the wiry kid who was a year younger than everyone else. Jobs was miserable, and in the middle of that year, he gave his parents an ultimatum: He said if he had to go back to school there again, he just wouldn’t go,
his father recalled. They took him seriously. So we decided we better move,
his dad said.
His parents pulled together what little they had and bought a three-bedroom home in Los Altos, where the schools were top-notch—and safe. There, presumably, their gifted son might focus on his studies. But in the mid-1960s, times were changing. Jobs would soon have other things on his mind.
2
Woz
The new school was indeed an improvement, and Jobs found other boys who shared his interests. There, he would form friendships that eventually would change his life.
He was also lucky to be growing up in the Santa Clara Valley, a place chock-full of engineers and tinkerers who would help feed his growing passion for the expanding field of electronics.
Realizing his son didn’t share his interest in cars and other kinds of mechanics, Paul Jobs had brought him electronic gizmos to take apart and study from the time he was in grade school. Steve Jobs also found a mentor in his old neighborhood, a Hewlett-Packard Company engineer named Larry Lang, who intrigued Jobs with an old-fashioned carbon microphone set up in his driveway that didn’t need an electronic amplifier. Lang introduced the boy to Heathkits, a conglomeration of electronic parts and detailed instructions that let hobbyists build radios and other gadgets.
You actually paid more money for them than if you just went and bought the finished product,
Jobs remembered. But he was intrigued by how putting together the kits helped him understand how things worked and gave him confidence in what he could build. These things were not mysteries anymore. I mean you looked at a television set (and) you would think that ‘I haven’t built one of those but I could. There’s one of those in the Heathkit catalog and I’ve built two other Heathkits so I could build that,’
Jobs said. It gave a tremendous level of self-confidence that, through exploration and learning, one could understand seemingly very complex things in one’s environment.
Even after the family moved, Jobs stayed in touch with Lang, who helped get him involved in a Hewlett-Packard Explorers Club. Jobs and other students gathered on Tuesday nights in the company’s cafeteria to hear engineers talk about their work. It was during one of those visits that Jobs saw a desktop computer for the first time. Computers in the 1960s ranged from refrigerator- to room-sized, usually requiring extra air-conditioning to keep from overheating. Hewlett-Packard had developed the 9100A, its first desktop scientific calculator, in 1968, advertising it as a personal computer
that was ten times faster than most machines at solving science and engineering problems.
It was huge, maybe forty pounds, but it was a beauty of a thing,
Jobs said. I fell in love with it.
While trying to build his own frequency counter, which measures the pulses in an electronic signal, Jobs found himself short of parts. Without thinking twice about it, he looked up H-P founder, Bill Hewlett, in the phone book and called him at home. Hewlett graciously took the call and visited with Jobs for twenty minutes. By the time the chat ended, Jobs had gotten the parts as well as a contact for a summer job. He spent a summer on the manufacturing line, putting screws in frequency counters, which were used in laboratories and factories. I was in heaven,
he