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Steve Jobs Biography Coming Sooner, Flying Off the Digital Shelves

Walter Isaacson’s 656-page authorized biography on the Apple founder was slated for release on November 21 from Simon & Schuster, just in time for the holiday season, but has been pushed forward nearly a month to October 24, the publisher announced today. Jobs’s death yesterday sent the tome, titled simply Steve Jobs, rocketing to number one on Amazon.com from the 384th spot, with the e-book, fittingly, topping the iTunes charts too. Today Isaacson writes for Time about Jobs’s request for a biography: “I had recently published one on Benjamin Franklin and was writing one about Albert Einstein, and my initial reaction was to wonder, half jokingly, whether he saw himself as the natural successor in that sequence.” The writer’s initial response was to say, “Maybe in a decade or two, when you retire,” but found out later that their talk came just before Jobs had his first cancer operation. At the last of nearly 50 interviews a few weeks ago, Jobs was in pain, but “still sharp,” and told Isaacson why he was so eager to be written about in an official way: “I wanted my kids to know me,” Jobs said. “I wasn’t always there for them, and I wanted them to know why and to understand what I did.”

Publication of Jobs Biography Accelerated [Media Decoder/NYT]
American Icon [Time via Poynter]

Steve Jobs Biography Coming Sooner, Flying Off the Digital Shelves