Review: Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When you really like a book this good you wish you had read it earlier.
Steve jobs was a genius, innovator, a creator with an honestly earned reputation of being an asshole.
For years now he has earned a god like reputation among entrepreneurs or should I say hip engineering grads. Growing up in 60s meant drugs and music was part of the hip culture that he partake in for a while. Soon after that began his search for meaning and spirituality in early college years, his trip to India for that same pursuit and finally dropping out of college as well. Luck, destiny or will-whatever it was led him to finally start Apple and the rest is history.
His obsession for delivering what people didn't know they wanted(once asked whether he will do a market study he replied with a Ford's response to the same question, ' If I had asked people what they wanted they would have asked for faster horses.") distinguished his company from other contemporary companies and competitors.
His power to get the best out of people by pushing them to extremes is also well documented in the book. His colleagues refered to it as his reality distortion field that means people agreed to do things that they deemed impossible when they talked to him, and the field seems to work on Jobs himself when he wanted to shut off from something he didn't want to deal with. Whether it was his troubled relationship with his abandoned girlfriend and her daughter Lisa, or whether it was dealing with cancer later in his life, he had inhuman power of will to ignore things he didn't want to confront.
I now understand why people worship him. It is because he was unlike most people. 'He wasn't smart. He was a genius.' concludes the author.
I am impressed by how the author manages to narrate a complex and layered story without losing any details.
This is my 2nd Walter Isaacson book and I have already added his other works to my virtual library. Really enjoyed reading this book.

View all my reviews

Review: The Psychology of Money

The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The title is enticing so I gave it a read. It has some good points and also good selection of examples to justify them. In general a good book but it talks mostly in context of investing. Put shortly, it is one of those books you know are full of good advices just not completely relatable yet.

View all my reviews

Review: A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The story unfolds with these opening words
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...."
Revolving around the time of Revolution in France and threading the story with happenings in two cities at that time- Paris and London it captures all emotions prevailing in that time- Love, hate, poverty, power, mistrust, bloodshed and so on.
To present such a sad story with a dispersion of humour and wisdom all through it truly justifies the Author's fame and respect.

A good book is a rollercoaster of emotions and this one definitely succeeds in taking you through that. All kinds of emotions are there in the story and the events are threaded in a way to give a show of the artist that the author is. I have always been amazed at the art of storytelling and this book is an addition in that regard.

Given how developments in the 20th century have led us (me more so) to falsely think people living a couple of centuries before that were very removed from us in almost all aspects. Well, this clears that misconception. The characters are very much relatable even the lifestyle, save few, gives and takes, is very much similar.
Easily the best book in fiction I have ever read.

View all my reviews