It’s steamy and suggestive, an unauthorized tell-all. These are words business reviewers rarely get to use. Banned is another word rarely applied to business books, yet iCon: Steve Jobs, the Greatest Second Act in the History of Business has managed to acquire all of the above descriptors. Written by Jeffrey S. Young, co-founder of MacWorld and Forbes.com, and William L. Simon, a screenwriter, author and movie insider, iCon chronicles the rise, fall and rise again of business phoenix Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple.
Much of the book is an abridged version of Young’s (also unauthorized) 1987 book, Steve Jobs: The Journey is the Reward, but it also traces his brilliant business career after Apple. Jobs famously exited Apple in 1985 and founded NeXT computer, which was later swallowed up by Apple and upon which Mac OS X is based. He is credited with the immense success of Pixar and its animated movies, such as Toy Story and The Incredibles not to mention his most recent best-selling dream-child, iPod. While mainly focused on Job’s leadership and career at Apple, Young and Simon’s story also includes personal facts about him, making the book something of a cross between Business 101 and the Hollywood Insider.
Jobs makes it clear to friends and associates that sharing details of his private life with the business equivalent of paparazzi is tantamount to betrayal. So it wasn’t a complete surprise when iCon entered a new category, that of banned book. This spring The San Jose Mercury News reported that iCon‘s publisher, John Wiley ∧ Sons, said Apple Computer has removed all its titles from the shelves of Apple stores in apparent retaliation for publication of the book. Stories of an illegitimate child, brushes with movie stars and an ego the size of any prima donna’s lend iCon its steamy reputation. And while it may not be as clear and easy to read as an Apple computer manual, it is a real-life story, a fascinating tale of an imaginative genius. Sharon Secor writes from Minneapolis.
