PositiveThe San Francisco ChronicleWalter Isaacson\'s timely authorized biography will probably contribute to this obsession rather than explain it ... But for those curious about this iconic figure - which in the past month has seemed to include just about everyone - Steve Jobs provides an irresistible glimpse into his complex and often contradictory life ... But here Isaacson, like all biographers, is faced with the fact that reality does not have a plot. Our lives break all the rules of good storytelling: There are too many tangents, characters inexplicably appear and disappear, and the pacing, far too often, is all wrong. These challenges begin to catch up with Isaacson in the second half of the book, just as Jobs\' career moves from the merely extraordinary to the genuinely unprecedented ... What had been a mostly linear narrative of Jobs growing up and founding Apple inevitably begins to splinter ... Isaacson seems more at home describing Jobs\' eventual triumphs back at Apple, after selling NeXT to the company in 1996 ... Isaacson wisely devotes much of the last third of his book to this astoundingly successful second stint at Apple, surely one of the great corporate turnarounds of all time.
