About this item
#1 New York Times BestsellerThere have been many books - on a large and small scale - about Steve Jobs, one of the most famous CEOs in history. But this book is different from all the others. Becoming Steve Jobs takes on and breaks down the existing myth and stereotypes about Steve Jobs. The conventional, one-dimensional view of Jobs is that he was half-genius, half-jerk from youth, an irascible and selfish leader who slighted friends and family alike. Becoming Steve Jobs answers the central question about the life and career of the Apple cofounder and CEO: How did a young man so reckless and arrogant that he was exiled from the company he founded become the most effective visionary business leader of our time, ultimately transforming the daily life of billions of people? Drawing on incredible and sometimes exclusive access, Schlender and Tetzeli tell a different story of a real human being who wrestled with his failings and learned to maximize his strengths over time.
About the Author
Brent Schlender, 61 years old, is a writer, editor, and author, best known for his award-winning magazine profiles of prominent entrepreneurs and business leaders of the Digital Revolution. In 2010, SVForum, the largest and oldest industry organization in Silicon Valley, awarded Schlender its Visionary Award for personifying the spirit innovation and entrepreneurship with his journalism. In March of 2015, Crown Business published "Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader," the culmination of a three-year collaboration between Schlender and writing partner Rick Tetzeli.
Schlender has been writing analytical business feature stories with a literary flair for more than 30 years, first for The Wall Street Journal starting in the late 1970s, and continuing after 1989 through a 20-year career as a bureau chief and editor-at-large for FORTUNE magazine. More recently, he has contributed to Fast Company magazine. Over the decades, he wrote dozens of in-depth feature stories about the exploits of many of Silicon Valley's most famous figures - Apple's Steve Jobs, Intel's Andy Grove and Craig Barrett, Oracle's Larry Ellison, Sun's Scott McNealy and Bill Joy, Google's Eric Schmidt, and Pixar's John Lasseter and Ed Catmull, to name just a few.
Schlender also is considered the journalistic authority on Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates, who he first met in 1985. And in the meantime, he wrote extensively about Sony Corp., developing close relationships with many of the company's CEOs, starting with founder Akio Morita. During Peter Drucker's final years, Schlender wrote annual articles for FORTUNE based on extensive, in-depth interviews with the famous management guru. His stories have been characterized by his extended and intimate access to his subjects, and by the depth of his background reporting and knowledge of business and technology. But his writing also reflects his extensive worldly experience of working and living abroad, primarily in China, Japan, and Latin America.
A native of McPherson, Kansas, Schlender and his wife of 31 years, Lorna Jacoby, live in San Mateo, CA. He has other creative interests as well. In 1999-2000 he collaborated with film director Robert Altman and cartoonist Garry Trudeau to develop a dramatic television series called "Killer App" that explored the genius, greed, skullduggery and vanity of Silicon Valley. And for many years he played tenor saxophone in a Bay Area jazz and rhythm and blues ensemble. More recently, he has been exploring the possibilities for making digital, visual art.
