Authors of the Book:
The authors of the book “Who was Steve Jobs?” are called Pam Pollack and Meg Belviso. In addition, the book was published by Grosset and Dunlap Company which is considered as the imprint of Penguin Group in The United States of America. The number of the book’s pages is 106 pages.
The first page contains the cover of the book which is a drawing for Steve Jobs, the second page contains the title of the book, name of authors and the publisher, the third page contains a dedication and rules of publish, the fourth page contains contents and at the fifth page, the chapters start. The final two pages in the book have bibliography and timeline for Steve’s life and for the most important incidents that happened in the world during this period.
In fact, the book was published on 29 March, 2012, which means that it is regarded as a new one. On the other hand, Pam Pollack and Meg Belviso wrote many books for children and they live nowadays in New York. Their most important book which made large sales is “Who Was Steve Jobs?” As a matter of fact, I never read any books written by them but I believe that this book is very entertaining from the moment I began to read it.
Genre of the Book:
Moreover, the genre of the book is bibliography as it talks about the life of one of the most important persons who made a great influence in the whole world and in the life of many people. On the other side, I think that people who are interested in reading and in knowing other’s lives especially famous ones would be very glad to read these kinds of books. Besides, readers who want to know more about Steve Jobs’ life, as without him we wouldn’t have been able to know I-phones or I-pads, would be interested to read it. As for me, I like these genres of books because they allow me to know more about people’s life especially their secrets and their hidden and personal life.
Title of the Book:
The title of the book is really interesting because it comes as a question and questions always attract the reader’s attention to read in order to answer the question. If the title wasn’t a question, maybe it wouldn’t have achieved many sales or liked many people. In my point of view, I believe that it is very catchy and it attracted my attention right away in order to read the book and know more about Steve Job’s life. As for the pictures, the cover of the book is very awesome. I liked it because it contains an attractive portrait for Steve Jobs. I think it is appropriate for the book’s title. In addition, it is very accurate and the painter is really talented because he drew him well and didn’t ignore any features in his face especially his glasses. What’s more, his body is drawn perfectly as I see in front of my eyes Steve Jobs himself. On the other side, I was really excited to read the book because of these drawings and because it is in a simple and easy language. In fact, the book contains drawings and pictures in every chapter that describe and talk about each incident and event in it. I think they are amazing especially for children because they will encourage them to read and finish the book.
Book Characters:
There are many characters in this book. One of the main characters is Steve Job’s non biological father who was called Paul. He adopted and his wife Clara Jobs adopted him in 1955. In fact, he used to work on cars and he made for Steve his first workbench when he was just five years old. Paul was a very talented mechanic and he transferred his love of gadgets to his adopted son. Other main characters are Steve’s biological parents who were Abdulfattah Jandali and Joanne Schieble. He met his mother after he asked a doctor whose name was mentioned in his birth certificate. He knew that she didn’t stay with his father for a long time and they had another daughter called Mona.
In fact, Mona is considered as one of the main characters. She was a famous novelist. Although she didn’t grow up with him, but they became very close unlike Steve’s sister Patty who was his non biological sister and grew with him but they weren’t close. Mona encouraged Steve to get close to his daughter Lisa from his first girlfriend Chrisann Brennan. She also made him knew his biological father as he owned a restaurant in the same village in which Steve used to live but neither them nor people knew that they were related. They didn’t meet each other personally but Abdulfattah was happy that he served one of the most famous men in the whole world.
Another main character in the personal life of Steve Jobs is his wife Laurene Powell from whom he had his first child called Reed Paul jobs after the name of Steve’s college. As for the main characters in his business life, there is his friend Steve Wozniak who was many years older than him. He had an amazing talent for making things and he went to a local college and designing computers as a hobby. They started to make a great computer instead of the old and large computers and they called it “The Apple II”.
Another character is Bill Hewlett who was one of the founders of a huge company called Hewlett-Packard. When Steve was thirteen years old, he discovered that one of his tools is missing. Therefore, he called the company in order to complain and to get a new one. At the end of the phone call, Hewlett offered Steve a summer job and promised him a bag full of machine parts. Steve of course agreed.
Another important character is George Lucas who was the director of the Star Wars movies. Steve liked him so much and in 1980, he bought out a theatre for a night so that everyone at Apple could see The Empire Strikes Back Together. In 1986, he worked with Lucas and became an owner in his computer graphics company named Pixar. The final main character is Bill Gates who was the owner of Microsoft Company and worked with Steve’s Company Apple in order to invent new computers and technology. In fact, Gates remained friends with Steve till his death and he said that he was a really good person.
The Book Main Idea
The main idea of the book is that no matter your conditions are you can still success and achieve all your dreams. Most of famous businessmen in our world weren’t rich. They were born in poor houses and didn’t even receive their full education. On the contrary, they managed to make their dreams real and became the richest persons like Bill Gates. As a matter off act, Steve was an adopted child and he didn’t know who their parents are till he grew.
His non biological father was a mechanic and this means that he wasn’t living a good and comfortable life. He used to work in his father’s garage when he was just a little boy. In addition, he didn’t have money to go to the college but he managed to make a deal with the dean of Reed’s college in order to be able to attend classes. He was not going to get a degree and he slept on the floors of his friends’ rooms. He didn’t have money to buy food, so all he used to eat was fruits.
Another main idea is no matter you fall and fail, you have to continue, pursue and believe in the way you think and in your dreams. Nothing comes easily. You have to do your best till your last breath. That’s what Steve did. His company Pixar and Next failed a lot of times in making huge sales. He was paying from his own money in order to keep the two companies working. He laid off many workers because he wasn’t able to pay them their salaries. He also received just one dollar per month because the company didn’t get enough income. Despite all of that, he managed to get back to his original company Apple and he was able to increase the sales of the three countries and to achieve huge sales. Later, he managed to make deals with Bill Gates who is the richest man in the whole world and he was able to get an income of about billions of dollars. He became a billionaire after he wasn’t able to buy his food.
Memorable Moments in Steve’s Life:
On the other hand, there are many important moments in Steve’s life whether the personal or the business one that needs to be highlighted. One of these personal moments is when he met his first wife Laurene and got his first child Reed. Another moment is when he met his biological mother and his sister Mona. Another important moment is when he started to be happy with his new family consisted of his four children: Lisa, Reed, Erin and Eve and his wife Laurene. Although his business life at this period was very bad, he was glad with his personal life and tried to not let his business life influence his other life. On the other side, Steve making a radio transistor using a Heathkit given by one of his neighbors is considered as one of the most fundamental moments in his life. Another moment which I regard very amazing is when Bill Hewlett offered Steve a summer job at his company. This was considered as the first official job Steve gets in his life.
Another great moment is when he took a job at Atari Company which was the one of the first companies to make computer games. The most fantastic moment in is life is when he and his friend Woz started the Apple company and when it went on business on April Fool’s Day in 1976. In fact, the new company’s office was Steve’s parents’ garage. Another thing that should be taken in consideration is the name of the Company as why Steve chose especially this name. As a matter of fact, Steve ate a lot of fruit, sometimes nothing but fruit. He thought the apple was the best fruit of all. It was perfect, just like he wanted his computer to be. Moreover, in order to make people remember the company, a logo had to be designed. Steve wanted an apple to represent Apple. Therefore, Apple’s apple logo looked fun. It was rainbow colored and had a bite taken out of it.
Another thing on which we should focus is Steve’s most important inventions. The first invention is the Macintosh who was introduced to the world by him in 1984. This computer contained all what Steve has learned in college even that he used his knowledge of calligraphy. When people started to type on their Mac computers, Steve wanted the letters to be beautiful. He spent a lot of time choosing how much space would be in between letters. The Mac offered several different fonts, or writing styles. Each one had slightly different letters. This made typing on the Mac fun. Despite all of that, it didn’t achieve great sales because people weren’t interested in buying home computers as Steve had expected and not all customers who did want a home computer bought Apple computers. Many bought computers from IBM or Microsoft.
Another great invention is the iTunes as Steve started thinking about something great. He bought a software program that allowed people to take their favorite songs from a CD and put them on the computer as a digital file. It was called an MP3 file. Once it was on the computer, you didn’t need the CD anymore. He renamed this program iTunes. By using this program, a person could turn their computers into a jukebox.
As a matter of fact, another invention is the iPod as it worked first only with Mac computers. But in 2002, Steve agreed to make it work with Microsoft’s Windows machines. That’s why its sales increased rapidly. The last two important inventions were the iPad and the iPhone. When Steve noticed that he didn’t like his cell phone and also his friends didn’t like theirs, he started to invent a phone that was different and unique. In fact, iPhone was the first mobile with a touch screen and was able to do more jobs than other mobiles. People loved it. On the other side, Steve introduced the iPad to people in 2010. It was smaller, thinner and lighter than anything before it. The iPad was a portable computer with no wires. It was much larger than the iPhone so it was easy to read books on it or browse the web or watch movies or play games. In fact, Apple sold 300,000 iPads in one day.
Beautiful Quotes Mentioned in the Book:
As for me, one of the best quotes I liked is “It is better to be a pirate than to join the navy”. This phrase was said by Steve Jobs and he meant by saying this that sometimes it was good to break rules and think in a different way. In fact, he broke all the kinds of rules. He didn’t like to wear shoes. He only ate fruit. He thought his diet made him so clean that he didn’t need to bathe often. A lot of people didn’t like to work with him because he smelled bad. Despite his strange ways, Steve could convince people to do things that seemed possible.
Another quote which I admired is “If this was my last day on earth, would I rather spend it at a business meeting or with this woman?” He said this quote when he was going to a business meeting but decided to spend the night with the woman who became later his wife, Laurene. This shows that he is really a sensitive and a gentleman for preferring love on business and that taught him later to appreciate his family and his children. The last quote which I adored the most is “Time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life…. Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition”. It was said by Steve in a speech to the graduating class at Stanford University. He said it when he discovered his infection with cancer.
Personal Impression about the Book:
I believe that this book is amazing as it talks about one of the most important men in the history, a man who gave the humanity a lot. In addition, I would all my friends to read the book because it is really entertaining with the pictures inside it and the language is so simple. Moreover, the book talks about the most important moments in Steve’s life, the personal and the business life and this shows that the authors did a great effort in order to collect all these info and all these details in order to write their book.
