Book Review: Steve Jobs

I wasn't going to read the Steve Jobs biography. I figured I knew enough of his and Apple's history that I wouldn't pick up that much new. Still, so many friends recommended it, I figured I'd give it a chance.

So much has been said about it that I feel a lengthy review isn't going to add much. Instead I'll give some high level impressions and a few interesting points and leave it at that.

The biography is interesting, but overrated. Jobs was certainly an interesting, super-driven guy with a passion for well crafted product. He was also quite an asshole (which the book does admit) as well as selfish and childish (which the book touches on but less so).

While the book mentions that he was guilty of taking credit for others' ideas, it then credits him with many of others' ideas. That said, there's something to be said for recognizing good ideas from the many placed before him, and creating an environment that pushes those ideas to be better.

In the end, the lesson is that a passion for craftsmanship, perfection, and simplicity, and placing these before profit, can yield great results. We should all strive to emulate Jobs a little in this sense.

One of the best examples, I think, of that striving for perfection is glossed over at the end of the book when discussing the plans for Apple's new campus built on HP's former campus in Cupertino. The campus is going to be a giant donut-like structure that looks like this:

Given it's massive size, one could imagine that the windows, if they were say, 8' segments, would be very close to the perfect circle. However, Jobs called for *curved* glass to be made so that it would truly be a  perfect circle. Imagine the difference in cost over that size of structure.

Steve Jobs

Book Review: Churchill

Churchill by historian Paul Johnson is a biography of Winston Churchill that is a short, easy introduction to those wanting an overview of his life and accomplishments. It is far from an objective look, being high on praise and low on critique of the man. If you can look past the bias, it's an easy entertaining read.

I was familiar with the highlights of Churchill's time leading Britain during the second World War, but not of the rest of his career. Nor did I know much about his many accomplishments.

A few interesting bits:

• Early in his career, Churchill seemed equal parts opportunist and bad-ass. Having only mediocre educational achievement, he sought to make a name for himself in the military. He sought out (through influence of his family) opportunities to throw himself into any fight in which the military was involved. As a result, he earned 8 medals while fighting in Cuba, India, Sudan, South Africa and then leading a battalion on the western front during WWI. By opportunist, I refer to the fact that he doubled as a correspondent through most of this time, earning money by writing columns and giving speeches about his military exploits.
• He was a prolific writer, publishing over 15 million words in numerous books and articles. His work on the second world war won him the Nobel Prize in literature.
• He showed some savvy as to the publishing business as well. e.g. Post WWII, he struck a deal with his successor as Prime Minister to give him exclusive access to all military documents and exclusive use of them under some set of conditions. This put him at a huge advantage over other historians, and given that  Roosevelt, Mussolini, and Hitler were all dead, he was the only western leader left to publish his account.

A good short read, but best taken with a grain of salt, given the author's bias.

Churchill