For the first time ever, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has agreed to participate in an authorized biography which will presumably not get its author’s publisher banned from Apple Stores. To be titled iSteve: The Book of Jobs, the book will be penned by Walter Isaacson and is set to hit stores in early 2012.
So why did Jobs agree to do this now, and with this particular biographer? Fortune reporter Philip Elmer-DeWitt, who was previously edited by Isaacson, hypothesizes:
The news came as no surprise to anyone who has worked with Isaacson. If there is one thread that runs through his long career in journalism and public service, it’s his talent for spotting the most influential people in any room and finding a way to get close to them.
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The Jobs book will be his fourth major biography. In addition to Kissinger: A Biography (1992) he has written Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2003) and Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007). His most recent book is American Sketches: Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane (2009).
Isaacson has reportedly been given “unprecedented access” not only to Jobs but to his family, past and current colleagues, and childhood setting, so this promises to contain previously unreported information on Jobs, albeit from a source he has publicly smiled upon.
