The Little Kingdom by Michael Moritz (1984)

William Morrow & Co.

The first Steve Jobs biography ever, written by Time magazine correspondent Michael Moritz (now a successful Silicon Valley investor).

The Little Kingdom is a very detailed account of the emergence of Apple and the birth of the personal computing industry. Several chapters deal with the early days of this new industry, and they are intertwined with Steve Jobs stories witnessed by Moritz during the development of Macintosh and Lisa. Note that this book is not solely about Steve but rather about the birth of Apple Computer.

The Journey Is The Reward by Jeffrey S. Young (1988)

Lynx Books

The Journey Is the Reward is probably the finest book about the earliest part of Steve Jobs' career. It starts with his birth in 1955 and ends in 1986, in the early days of NeXT. It investigates pretty much every aspect of Steve's career as well as his personal life. It's really passionating, and exclusively about Steve — unlike Moritz's The Little Kingdom.

A highly recommended vintage buy.

Steve Jobs & The NeXT Big Thing by Randall E. Stross (1993)

Scribner

Steve Jobs & the NeXT Big Thing is the only book about NeXT that I know of.

It is a very well-documented book — Randal Stross is a historian, and it shows. It's all there, from the visit to Xerox PARC in 1981 to the company's gradual demise. But this book is really about NeXT; as a result, unlike other biographies, there is almost no mention of Steve's personal life.

The only drawback of this book, and the reason I'm rating it three stars only, is the author's evident contempt toward Steve — he keeps arguing that he has no managerial capabilities and that his early succes at Apple was a strike of luck. Pixar is even quoted as an evidence of Steve's lack of business acumen...

Accidental Empires by Robert X. Cringely (1995)

Harper Paperbacks

This book by InfoWorld journalist Bob Cringely is about Silicon Valley in general. It was the main source of inspiration for his TV documentary Triumph of Nerds, which came out two years later, in 1995 (see the Movies section).

A whole chapter is dedicated to Steve Jobs (“the Prophet”). It is fun to read though rather biased and very dated. I do not recommend reading the book unless you are highly interested in the history of the industry, including the PC side of the fence. In any case, Triumph of the Nerds is much, much better.

The most fun in the book is reading the cocky predictions of Bob, 90% of which are completely out of place (e.g. hard drives disappearing at the end of the 1990s).

A Regular Guy by Mona Simpson (1996)

Vintage

A Regular Guy is a 1996 novel by Mona Simpson, Steve Jobs’ biological sister. Let’s say it right away: this book is about Steve Jobs. Steve and Lisa, to be precise.

I have played a little game with A Regular Guy: I copied extracts of the book (16 pages of them), and replaced certain words in a word processor: “Tom Owens” becomes “Steve Jobs”, “Genesis” is “Apple”, “Jane” is “Lisa”, “Alta” is “Palo Alto”, “Rooney” is “Sculley”, and so on. The result: a piece about Steve Jobs. You can virtually see him pronounce the words through Owens’ mouth. Steve’s daughter Lisa, while still a student in journalism at Harvard, actually wrote a piece about her feelings toward this book. In it she confirms that certain phrases from his father were used without modification whatsoever. Of course she underlines that parts of the book are also completely made up.

So here’s my advice: if you’re interested in the private Steve, especially how he was during his Macintosh and NeXT years (until his downfall): rush out and buy A Regular Guy.

The Second Coming of Steve Jobs by Alan Deutschman (2000)

Broadway

The Second Coming of Steve Jobs is a very interesting biography that ranges from Steve's downfall in 1985 to his glorious comeback to Apple in 1997.

As its title indicates, it is written in the journalistic style (Deutschman works for Vanity Fair), hence filled with a myriad of anecdotes about Steve, most of them personal — not to say gossipy. It's more an attempt to describe his personality than his careeer moves. There is also a very detailed and highly interesting account of the Pixar's infancy.

Overall, The Second Coming of Steve Jobs is a delight to read, si I highly recommend it.

iCon by Jeffrey S. Young and William L. Simon (2005)

Wiley

iCon was launched in great fanfare in 2005, as Steve tried to prevent it from being published and removed all of his editors' books from the shelves of his Apple Stores. I think it was more publicity than this book deserved.

To make it short, the first chapters are copied-pasted from The Journey Is the Reward, then there is a long and boring account of the early Pixar years that was stolen from Deutschman's The Second Coming, and the last chapters are a mix of press articles about the iPod and the Macworld 2005 keynote. There is almost no mention of Steve's NeXT years, and IMHO the lengthy Pixar chapters are completely pointless in such a biography (especially the years before Steve's purchase).

I don't recommend this book to anyone.

iWoz by Steve Wozniak and Gina Smith (2007)

W.W. Norton & Co.

Autobiographies are always interesting to read as they give one person’s point of view, leaving very little room for ambiguity. This is the best thing about iWoz, the book by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, the geek/computer genius without whom there would be no Apple as we know it. The book is very interesting in its depiction of the early days of the company, correcting several widespread mistakes and putting it in the context of the exciting, early days of personal computing in the 1970s.

The biggest drawback is probably the lengthy amount of geeky technical details Woz feels he has to describe in order for you to fully appreciate his genius. Steve Jobs’ role is also somewhat diminished, especially in the last chapter — Woz says the iMac and iPod were in preparation before he came back at Apple, which is pretty far-fetched.

I still recommend the book to all Apple enthusiasts curious about the company’s history.

Option$: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs by Fake Steve Jobs/Dan Lyons (2007)

Perseus Publishing

This book is obviously a parody and not a biography, and of course I didn't use it for the website... but I had to put Option$ one my list, as it is by far one of the books I had the most fun reading. It's a very clever story written in the first person by (Fake) Steve Jobs. If you liked the blog, you will love it. I highly recommend it to all Steve Jobs fans.

The Pixar Touch by David A. Price (2008)

Alfred A. Knopg

This is the almost-official history of Pixar Studios. The book is very detailed, and you can feel the author did his job well by getting information directly from the key players. He covers every aspect of the company’s history, from business to art and animation techniques, and from the early days of Catmull and Smith to the merger with Disney.

Unlike what one could fear given that Steve Jobs is not the main character in Pixar’s history, there is very little misinformation about him. Overall, the book rings quite true.

An interesting read for anyone who cares about Steve’s “hobby” and the origin of his comeback.

Inside Steve's Brain by Leander Kahney (2008)

Portfolio

A well-documented book by Cult of Mac editor Leander Kahney, in which he tries to make a synthesis of what Steve Jobs thinks about a variety of things (innovation, recruitment, even changing the world). I am rating it three stars because, if you read all the material on all about Steve Jobs.com, as well as all the articles listed in the Interviews and Links section, you will not learn anything in the book. It's essentially a mashup of these articles and other biographies.

I still recommend Inside Steve's Brain for "Steve fans in the making" and hardcover-fanatics.

Triumph of the Nerds (1996)

PBS

Triumph of the Nerds is a three-part documentary about the history of the PC industry from its humble beginnings in the early 1970s to the launch of Windows 95. The first part documents the infancy of personal computing, and decribes Apple’s early success with the Apple II in great detail. The second part is mainly about the IBM PC and the explosion of the business in the 1980s. Finally, the third part covers the coming of the graphical user interface, as well as the supposed future demise of the PC by network computing.

The documentary is very interesting and very well done. Every important aspect of the industry’s history is covered, all in all in a pretty accurate yet very entertaining way. Bob Cringely managed to speak with basically every industry pioneer in his documentary, including a substantial interview with Steve Jobs himself. The way Cringely presents and comments things is a little biased but that gives the movie its distinctive personality.

A must-see for anyone interested in the history of the PC industry.

Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999)

TNT

This is the first and so far only fiction movie that was made about Steve Jobs (and Bill Gates for that matter).

Pirates of Silicon Valley is a 1999 TV movie featuring Noah Wyle in the role of Steve Jobs. The story basically describes Steve's and Bill's early careers in parallel, up to the mid-1980s, after Steve left Apple.

Of course the whole story is very romanticized, just like every historical movie is, and much importance is given to Steve’s hippie days and the troubles in his personal life. Yet the depiction of the atmosphere that presided over Apple’s early days (as well as Microsoft’s) is quite accurate, so much so that Steve actually invited Noah to start his keynote speech at Macworld New York 1999, giving the movie some sort of official blessing.

The Pixar Story (2007)

Leslie Iwerks

The Pixar Story is a very well-done documentary about the history of Pixar, from the very early days before Steve Jobs bought it, to the release of Cars in 2006. It takes real advantage of being a movie, i.e. it feature interviews of major players as well as a lot of footage from Pixar's archives. Steve himself is interviewed and often shown in the movie.

However, the trade-off is the shadow cast on wretcheder periods of the company's history. Steve's repeat attempts to sell the fledging company becomes his shared dream of making a 3D feature film. There is absolutely no mention of the clash between him and Eisner, the treason of Katzenberg, and of course barely any mention of co-founder Alvy Ray Smith.

The movie was nominated for the Emmy Awards as "Best Television Special."

Bloomberg Game Changers: Steve Jobs (2010)

Bloomberg TV

I have to say in all fairness that I was personally contacted by the producers of this Bloomberg TV special on Steve Jobs, one year before airing. They were looking for pictures of Steve and asked me where to look… they even used a picture I had scanned myself, one from Steve's school yearbook, when he was 14! So my opinion might be a little biased.

To say the least, covering Steve's 30-year career in just 60 minutes is tough. But I think Bloomberg did a pretty good job at it, especially avoiding the usual mistake of overlooking Steve's NeXT years, perhaps at the expense of Apple's resurgence.

Yet what I like most about this documentary, and what makes it such a delight to watch, is the quality of the interviewees. The best authors of Steve Jobs biographies, Alan Deutschman (The Second Coming of Steve Jobs), Bob Cringely (who did Triumph of the Nerds, see above), even Michael Moritz, writer of The Little Kingdom and famous Silicon Valley VC; key players: Apple's former CEO John Sculley, former Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, and music major executives. As well as emblematic figures of the Apple galaxy, such as Guy Kawasaki and Cult of Mac editor Leander Kahney.

I think this movie is worth a look, and it's just 60 minutes… so watch it!