Module 12: Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different

Image retrieved from Amazon.com

Book Summary: This book tells the story of Steve Jobs' life and achievements, in typical biography fashion, except that it tells his story in the frame of his speech at the Stanford 2005 graduation. The book is organized, like his speech, in three stories: "The journey is the reward"; "Real artists ship"; and "And one more thing..." The author begins with Steve at the podium, but the book quickly goes into the story of his birth and adoption, taking note of his birth mother insisting that he go to college-educated parents, and upon finding out that the Jobs weren't, making them promise to send Steve to college. Ironically, of course, Steve dropped out of college after one semester. The book also highlights Steve's fierce love for his adoptive parents. Blumenthal tells stories of Steve, a precocious but often bored and mischievous kid morphing into a teenager with an intense interest in electronics, though he was never really an engineer. He went on to small liberal arts college in Oregon, where he dropped out because he felt he was learning more outside of class, and it wasn't worth the enormous amount of money his parents were spending. He spent time working at an apple orchard, where the name for Apple Computer eventually came from. The author does a good job of connecting the events in Steve's life, highlighting connections between seemingly innocuous events, such as how Steve auditing a calligraphy class would later help him in the development of the Macintosh. Steve started Apple with his friend Steve Wozniak, a brilliant engineer. The two had success with the Apple II personal computer for many years. However, because Steve was so intense, often to the detriment of his working relationships, he was eventually fired from Apple in the mid-80s. He went on to form Next, another computer company that didn't do very well, but its technology would later help Steve revive the failing Apple company. He also bought Pixar, which also wasn't doing very well, but his financial support made the making of Toy Story possible. In the 1990s, he was able to return to Apple, and the fun, colorful iMac was born. Steve stayed at Apple through the end of his career, and his vision was responsible for many revolutionary inventions, including the iPod and iPhone. Unfortunately, he was eventually diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and after living with it for eight years, he passed away in 2011. Blumenthal paints a portrait of him as an exceptional, extraordinary, complicated, flawed person.

APA reference: 
Blumenthal, K. (2012). Steve Jobs: The man who thought different. New York: Feiwel and Friends.

Impressions: Blumenthal does a fantastic job of highlighting the intricacies and quirks of Steve Jobs. As a reader, I was calling him a jerk one minute and marveling at his vision the next. The inclusion of details like Steve thinking he didn't need to bathe because he only ate fruit, and then smelling up the office, were a nice touch to show just how eccentric he was. Also, although this book is a biography telling about Steve and his life, there is quite a bit of STEM information included as well. Blumenthal does a good job of explaining the technical computer parts so that a layman can understand. I particularly enjoyed her sidebar explaining how Pixar used algebra and geometry to create digital animation. I think this book would be a great read for students who have always grown up with computers and massive amounts of technology to learn where it all came from and how it came about. I also liked how, despite his rock star status (which is clearly conveyed in the book as well), the book is also just a story of a man - the connections between events, his triumphs, his disappointments, and everything in between.

Professional review (from Kirkus Reviews):
"Ad admiring though not entirely adulatory view of our era's greatest technology celebrity, rightly dubbed (by U2's Bono) 'the hardware software Elvis.' Blumenthal weaves her portrait on the thematic frame used by Jobs himself in his autobiographical 2005 Stanford commencement address. She 'connects the dots' that led him from his adoption as an infant through his 'phone phreaking' days to a spectacular rise and just as meteoric fall from corporate grace in the 1980s. Following a decade of diminished fortunes and largely self-inflicted complications in personal relationships, he returned to Apple for a spectacular second act that also turned out to be his final one. Despite getting bogged down occasionally in detail, the author tells a cohesive tale, infused with dry wit ('He considered going into politics, but he had never actually voted, which would have been a drawback'). The book is thoroughly researched and clear on the subject's foibles as well as his genius. A perceptive, well-wrought picture of an iconic figure well worth admiring--from a distance. (endnotes, photos, time line) (Biography. 11-14)."

Steve Jobs: The man who thought different [Review of the book, Steve Jobs: The man who thought different by K. Blumenthal]. (2012). Kirkus Reviews, 80(4), 386-387.

Library uses: This book could easily be used for a unit on biographies, or historical figures, but I'm thinking outside the box. I would like to use this book, and the technological information in it, to support a science or math class. Specifically, the information about Pixar could be used as part of a project for students to use math to create something. This could be part of a makerspace activity, where students are read an excerpt of the book and given materials to create something and record the mathematical formulas they used. Afterward, students could even hold a sort of mock-conference, like the ones Steve spoke at and went to for Apple, where they present their creations to each other. I think this book could really inspire students to create, and to continue creating throughout their lives.