A new book about Steve Jobs, authored by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli will arive later this month on March 24th. Titled ‘Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader’, the book promises to answer the question of how the exiled Steve Jobs managed to return to Apple and ‘become the most effective visionary business leader of our time’.
Drawing on incredible and sometimes exclusive access, Schlender and Tetzeli tell a different story of a real human being who wrestled with his failings and learned to maximize his strengths over time. Their rich, compelling narrative is filled with stories never told before from the people who knew Jobs best, and who decided to open up to the authors, including his family, former inner circle executives, and top people at Apple, Pixar and Disney, most notably Tim Cook, Jony Ive, Eddy Cue, Ed Catmull, John Lasseter, Robert Iger and many others. In addition, Brent knew Jobs personally for 25 years and draws upon his many interviews with him, on and off the record, in writing the book. He and Rick humanize the man and explain, rather than simply describe, his behavior. Along the way, the book provides rich context about the technology revolution we all have lived through, and the ways in which Jobs changed our world.
The authors are both journalists that have covered the technology industry for decades. Rick Tetzeli is the executive editor of Fast Company and Brent Schlender has written for the Wall Street Journal and Fortune. In fact Schlender had interviewed Steve Jobs on multiple occasions and actually became close friends with Jobs himself.
Early testimonials about the book are positive, with Daring Fireball’s John Gruber receiving an advance copy of the book and writing that this is “the book about Steve Jobs that the world deserves”, as well as noting that:
The book is an accurate, engaging retelling of the known history of Jobs’s life and career, but also contains a significant amount of new reporting. There are stories in this book that are going to be sensational. (I’ve promised to keep them to myself for now.)
‘Becoming Steve Jobs’ is available for pre-order on Amazon and the iBookstore.