Amazon Best Books of the Month, November 2011: It is difficult to read the opening pages of Walter Isaacsonâs Steve Jobs without feeling melancholic. Jobs retired at the end of August and died about six weeks later. Now, just weeks after his death, you can open the book that bears his name and read about his youth, his promise, and his relentless press to succeed. But the initial sadness in starting the book is soon replaced by something else, which is the intensity of the read--mirroring the intensity of Jobsâs focus and vision for his products. Few in history have transformed their time like Steve Jobs, and one could argue that he stands with the Fords, Edisons, and Gutenbergs of the world. This is a timely and complete portrait that pulls no punches and gives insight into a man whose contradictions were in many ways his greatest strength. --Chris Schluep Amazon Exclusive: A Q&A with Walter Isaacson Q: It's becoming well known that Jobs was able to create his Reality Distortion Field when it served him. Was it difficult for you to cut through the RDF and get beneath the narrative that he created? How did you do it? Isaacson: Andy Hertzfeld, who worked with Steve on the original Macintosh team, said that even if you were aware of his Reality Distortion Field, you still got caught up in it. But that is why Steve was so successful: He willfully bent reality so that you became convinced you could do the impossible, so you did. I never felt he was intentionally misleading me, but I did try to check every story. I did more than a hundred interviews. And he urged me not just to hear his version, but to interview as many people as possible. It was one of his many odd contradictions: He could distort reality, yet he was also brutally honest most of the time. He impressed upon me the value of honesty, rather than trying to whitewash things. Q: How were the interviews with Jobs conducted? Did you ask lots of questions, or did he just talk? Isaacson: I asked very few questions. We would take long walks or drives, or sit in his garden, and I would raise a topic and let him expound on it. Even during the more formal sessions in his living room, I would just sit quietly and listen. He loved to tell stories, and he would get very emotional, especially when talking about people in his life whom he admired or disdained. Q: He was a powerful man who could hold a grudge. Was it easy to get others to talk about Jobs willingly? Were they afraid to talk? Isaacson: Everyone was eager to talk about Steve. They all had stories to tell, and they loved to tell them. Even those who told me about his rough manner put it in the context of how inspiring he could be. Q: Jobs embraced the counterculture and Buddhism. Yet he was a billionaire businessman with his own jet. In what way did Jobs' contradictions contribute to his success? Isaacson: Steve was filled with contradictions. He was a counterculture rebel who became a billionaire. He eschewed material objects yet made objects of desire. He talked, at times, about how he wrestled with these contradictions. His counterculture background combined with his love of electronics and business was key to the products he created. They combined artistry and technology. Q: Jobs could be notoriously difficult. Did you wind up liking him in the end? Isaacson: Yes, I liked him and was inspired by him. But I knew he could be unkind and rough. These things can go together. When my book first came out, some people skimmed it quickly and cherry-picked the examples of his being rude to people. But that was only half the story. Fortunately, as people read the whole book, they saw the theme of the narrative: He could be petulant and rough, but this was driven by his passion and pursuit of perfection. He liked people to stand up to him, and he said that brutal honesty was required to be part of his team. And the teams he built became extremely loyal and inspired. Q: Do you believe he was a genius? Isaacson: He was a genius at connecting art to technology, of making leaps based on intuition and imagination. He knew how to make emotional connections with those around him and with his customers. Q: Did he have regrets? Isaacson: He had some regrets, which he expressed in his interviews. For example, he said that he did not handle well the pregnancy of his first girlfriend. But he was deeply satisfied by the creativity he ingrained at Apple and the loyalty of both his close colleagues and his family. Q: What do you think is his legacy? Isaacson: His legacy is transforming seven industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, digital publishing, and retail stores. His legacy is creating what became the most valuable company on earth, one that stood at the intersection of the humanities and technology, and is the company most likely still to be doing that a generation from now. His legacy, as he said in his "Think Different" ad, was reminding us that the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do. Photo credit: Patrice Gilbert Photography
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Napoleon's Buttons is the fascinating account of seventeen groups of molecules that have greatly influenced the course of history. These molecules provided the impetus for early exploration, and made possible the voyages of discovery that ensued. The molecules resulted in grand feats of engineering and spurred advances in medicine and law; they determined what we now eat, drink, and wear. A change as small as the position of an atom can lead to enormous alterations in the properties of a substance-which, in turn, can result in great historical shifts. With lively prose and an eye for colorful and unusual details, Le Couteur and Burreson offer a novel way to understand the shaping of civilization and the workings of our contemporary world.
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Take it easy: that's Michio Kaku's motto. Given the extraordinary advances science has thrown up in time for the millennium, the only way you could possibly fit them into a single volume is by a correspondingly massive simplification. Subtitled How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century and Beyond, Visions assumes that, by and large, scientists get to do whatever they like, that all technologies are consumer technologies, and that consumers welcome anything and everything science throws at them. Kaku gets away with this frankly dodgy strategy by dint of sheer hard work. He has based his predictions on interviews with more than 150 renowned working scientists; he integrates these interviews with a huge body of original journalistic material; and, above all, he roots that mass of information on an entirely reasonable model of what the purpose of science will be in the third millennium. Up until now, science has expended its efforts on decoding most of the fundamental natural processes--"the dance," as Kaku puts it, of elementary particles deep inside stars and the rhythms of DNA molecules coiling and uncoiling within our bodies. Science's task now, Kaku believes, is to cross-pollinate advances thrown up by the study of matter, biology, and mind--modern science's three main theaters of endeavor. "We are now making the transition from amateur chess players to grand masters," he writes, "from observers to choreographers of nature." Then again, he also believes that "the Internet ... will eventually become a 'Magic Mirror' that appears in fairy tales, able to speak with the wisdom of the human race." Kaku, in short, deserves a good slapping--but he also deserves to be read. --Simon Ings, Amazon.co.uk
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More than 2,500 years ago, Sun Tzu composed his masterpiece The Art of War which has been used by the world's greatest leaders including Napoleon. Here, Wing makes the influential philosophies of the Orient accessible to all seekers of professional achievement and personal excellence. 20 halftones, 35 illustrations.
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A new, illustrated edition of a foundational work on architecture, engineering, and urban planning The only treatise on architecture to have survived from Roman times, Vitruvius' On Architecture provides a fascinating picture of how the Romans planned and built their great structures and cities. Dedicated to Augustus, it sets out all the information an architect of the time needed-from plans for temples, public baths, government buildings, and private homes to the best materials and techniques for building-and introduces longstanding principles of architecture, from the use of nature's harmonies in design to the ideal modular proportions of the human body, which later inspired Leonardo da Vinci. This new translation, accompanied by 100 black-and-white images, captures the clear, pragmatic tone of Vitruvius' writings, showing why the ancient architect and engineer's theories have remained influential for two millennia.
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Blogs, networking sites, and other examples of the social web provide businesses with a largely untapped marketing channel for products and services. But how do you take advantage of them? With The New Community Rules, you'll understand how social web technologies work, and learn the most practical and effective ways to reach people who frequent these sites. Written by an expert in social media and viral marketing, this book cuts through the hype and jargon to give you intelligent advice and strategies for positioning your business on the social web, with case studies that show how other companies have used this approach.The New Community Rules will help you:Explore blogging and microblogging, and find out how to use applications such as Twitter to create brand awareness Learn the art of conversation marketing, and how social media thrives on honesty and transparency Manage and enhance your online reputation through the social web Tap into the increasingly influential video and podcasting market Discover which tactics work -- and which don't -- by learning about what other marketers have tried Many consumers today use the Web as a voice. The New Community Rules demonstrates how you can join the conversation, contribute to the community, and bring people to your product or service.
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On July 20, 1969, the world stood still to watch thirty-eight-year-old American astronaut Neil A. Armstrong become the first person to step on the surface of another heavenly body. Perhaps no words in human history became better known than those few he uttered at that historic moment. In a penetrating exploration of American hero worship, Hansen addresses the complex legacy of the First Man, as an astronaut and an individual.
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One of the most important and controversial aspects of the history of World War II is the failure of the Germans to build an atomic bomb. Germany was the birthplace of modern physics; it possessed the raw materials and the industrial base; and it commanded key intellectual resources. What happened? This study tells of the interplay between science and espionage, morality and military necessity, and paranoia and cool logic that marked the German bomb programme and the Allied response to it. On the basis of interviews and intensive research, the author concludes that Werner Heisenberg, who was in charge of the German atomic effort, consciously obstructed the development of the bomb and, in a famous 1941 meeting in Copenhagen with his former mentor Neils Bohr, in effect sought to dissuade the Allies from their pursuit of the bomb.
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Paul Erdõs, one of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century, and certainly the most eccentric, was internationally recognized as a prodigy by age seventeen. Hungarian-born Erdõs believed that the meaning of life was to prove and conjecture. His work in the United States and all over the world has earned him the titles of the century's leading number theorist and the most prolific mathematician who ever lived. Erdõs's important work has proved pivotal to the development of computer science, and his unique personality makes him an unforgettable character in the world of mathematics. Incapable of the smallest of household tasks and having no permanent home or job, he was sustained by the generosity of colleagues and by his own belief in the beauty of numbers. Witty and filled with the sort of mathematical puzzles that intrigued Erdõs and continue to fascinate mathematicians today, My Brain Is Open is the story of this strange genius and a journey in his footsteps through the world of mathematics, where universal truths await discovery like hidden treasures and where brilliant proofs are poetry.
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The future of online religion is now!Operating online allows long-established religious communities to reach the unaffiliated like never before. More startling is the ease by which anyone with internet access can create new circles of faith. Electronic shrines and kitschy personal Web "altars" express adoration for living celebrities, just as they honor the memory of long-departed martyrs. In Give Me That Online Religion, online religion expert Brenda Brasher braves a new world in which cyber concepts and technologies challenge conventional ideas about the human condition--all the while attempting to realize age-old religious ideals of transcendence and eternal life.As the Internet continues its rapid absorption of culture, Give Me That Online Religion offers pause for thought about spirituality in the cyber-age. Religion's move to the online world does not mean technology's triumph over faith. Rather, Brasher argues, it assures religion's place in the wired universe, along with commerce and communications--meeting the spiritual demands of Internet generations to come.
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