Steve Jobs: Thinking Differently

Lakin offers a straightforward profile of the late computer/electronics pioneer and Apple cofounder via quotes and information culled from news articles, speeches, and books, including the recently published adult biography Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. She follows Jobs’s life along a linear trajectory from a restless but gifted boy through an enlightenment-seeking college dropout to Apple genius, finding parallels between his life and changes in technology and society. She shares accounts of Jobs’s unkempt appearance in the 1970s, when he skipped showers or put his bare feet up on the table at a business meeting. She also describes his outbursts and relentless arguments with employees and investors that ended in his crying jags, as well as a stubborn streak that resulted in Jobs denying key employees stock options and his initial refusal to accept paternity of a daughter born from an early relationship. Though Lakin employs a wealth of interesting facts and anecdotes, the narrative, while accessible, doesn’t do much to bring the subject alive on page. Source notes are included. Ages 8–12. (Feb.)