Walter Isaacson

Steve Jobs

Draws on more than forty interviews with Steve Jobs, as well as interviews with family members, friends, competitors, and colleagues to offer a look at the co-founder and leading creative force behind the Apple computer company.

"He was history's most creative genius. What secrets can he teach us? The [bestselling biographer] brings Leonardo da Vinci to life in this exciting new biography. Drawing on thousands of pages from Leonardo's astonishing notebooks and new discoveries about his life and work, Walter Isaacson weaves a narrative that connects his art to his science. He shows how Leonardo's genius was based on skills we can improve in ourselves, such as passionate curiosity, careful observation, and an imagination so playful that it flirted with fantasy. His creativity, like that of other great innovators, came from standing at the intersection of the humanities and technology. He peeled flesh off the faces of cadavers, drew the muscles that move the lips, and then painted history's most memorable smile on the Mona Lisa. He explored the math of optics, showed how light rays strike the cornea, and produced illusions of changing perspectives in The Last Supper. Isaacson also describes how Leonardo's lifelong enthusiasm for staging theatrical productions informed his paintings and inventions. His ability to combine art and science, made iconic by his drawing of what may be himself inside a circle and a square, remains the enduring recipe for innovation. His life should remind us of the importance of instilling, both in ourselves and our children, not just received knowledge but a willingness to question it; to be imaginative and, like talented misfits and rebels in any era, to think different."--Jacket.

Leonardo Da Vinci

"A gripping account of how the pioneering scientist Jennifer Doudna, along with her colleagues and rivals, launched a revolution that will allow us to cure diseases, fend off viruses, and enhance our children"--

Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race

The Code Breaker

A revelatory history of the people who created the computer and the internet discusses the process through which innovation happens in the modern world, citing the pivotal contributions of such figures as programming pioneer Ada Lovelace. By the author of Steve Jobs. 500,000 first printing.

How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

The Innovators

From the author of Steve Jobs and other bestselling biographies, this is the astonishingly intimate story of the most fascinating and controversial innovator of our era—a rule-breaking visionary who helped to lead the world into the era of electric vehicles, private space exploration, and artificial intelligence. Oh, and took over Twitter. When Elon Musk was a kid in South Africa, he was regularly beaten by bullies. One day a group pushed him down some concrete steps and kicked him until his face was a swollen ball of flesh. He was in the hospital for a week. But the physical scars were minor compared to the emotional ones inflicted by his father, an engineer, rogue, and charismatic fantasist. His father’s impact on his psyche would linger. He developed into a tough yet vulnerable man-child, prone to abrupt Jekyll-and-Hyde mood swings, with an exceedingly high tolerance for risk, a craving for drama, an epic sense of mission, and a maniacal intensity that was callous and at times destructive. At the beginning of 2022—after a year marked by SpaceX launching thirty-one rockets into orbit, Tesla selling a million cars, and him becoming the richest man on earth—Musk spoke ruefully about his compulsion to stir up dramas. “I need to shift my mindset away from being in crisis mode, which it has been for about fourteen years now, or arguably most of my life,” he said. It was a wistful comment, not a New Year’s resolution. Even as he said it, he was secretly buying up shares of Twitter, the world’s ultimate playground. Over the years, whenever he was in a dark place, his mind went back to being bullied on the playground. Now he had the chance to own the playground. For two years, Isaacson shadowed Musk, attended his meetings, walked his factories with him, and spent hours interviewing him, his family, friends, coworkers, and adversaries. The result is the revealing inside story, filled with amazing tales of triumphs and turmoil, that addresses the question: are the demons that drive Musk also what it takes to drive innovation and progress?

Elon Musk

Jeff Bezos

The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos, With an Introduction by Walter Isaacson

Invent and Wander

Evan Thomas

A captivating blend of personal biography and public drama, The Wise Men introduces the original best and brightest, leaders whose outsized personalities and actions brought order to postwar chaos: Averell Harriman, the freewheeling diplomat and Roosevelt's special envoy to Churchill and Stalin; Dean Acheson, the secretary of state who was more responsible for the Truman Doctrine than Truman and for the Marshall Plan than General Marshall; George Kennan, self-cast outsider and intellectual darling of the Washington elite; Robert Lovett, assistant secretary of war, undersecretary of state, and secretary of defense throughout the formative years of the Cold War; John McCloy, one of the nation's most influential private citizens; and Charles Bohlen, adroit diplomat and ambassador to the Soviet Union.

Six Friends and the World They Made

The Wise Men

A biography of the political figure, based on more than one hundred and fifty interviews with Kissinger and others, chronicles his childhood in Nazi Germany, his rise in politics, and his political relationships.

A Biography

Kissinger

Presents the life and achievements of Albert Einstein, focusing on his rise from struggling patent clerk to eminent scientist and providing descriptions of the famous personalities and political upheavals of the time period in which he lived.

The Life of a Genius

Einstein

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The best historians in the land consider examples of great leadership, well known and surprising, from Washington to Willkie and more. What made FDR a more successful leader during the Depression crisis than Hoover? Why was Eisenhower more effective as supreme commander during World War II than he was as president? Why was Grant one of the best presidents of his day, if not in all of American history? What drove Bobby Kennedy into the scrum of electoral politics? Who was Pauli Murray and why was she one of the most decisive figures in the movement for civil rights? Find the surprising and revelatory answers to these questions and more in this collection of new essays by great historians, including Sean Wilentz, Alan Brinkley, Annette Gordon-Reed, Jean Strouse, Robert Dallek, Frances FitzGerald, and others. Entertaining and insightful individually, taken together the essays represent a valuable set of reflections on the enduring ingredients of leadership—the focus of an introduction by Walter Isaacson. This book is a treat for lovers of fine history.

Profiles in Leadership: Historians on the Elusive Quality of Greatness

What are the roots of creativity? What makes for great leadership? How do influential people end up rippling the surface of history? In this collection of essays, Walter Isaacson reflects on the lessons to be learned from Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton, and various other interesting characters he has chronicled as a biographer and journalist. The people he writes about have an awesome intelligence, in most cases, but that is not the secret of their success. They had qualities that were even more rare, such as imagination and true curiosity. Isaacson reflects on how he became a writer, the lessons he learned from various people he met, and the challenges he sees for journalism in the digital age. He also offers loving tributes to his hometown of New Orleans, which both before and after Hurricane Katrina offered many of the ingredients for a creative culture, and to the Louisiana novelist Walker Percy, who was an early mentor. In an anecdotal and personal way, Isaacson describes the joys of the "so-called writing life" and the way that tales about the lives of fascinating people can enlighten our own lives.

Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane

American Sketches

André Czarnobai

Com base em milhares de páginas dos impressionantes cadernos que Leonardo manteve ao longo de boa parte da vida e nas mais recentes descobertas sobre sua obra e sua trajetória, Walter Isaacson, biógrafo de Einstein e Steve Jobs, tece uma narrativa que conecta arte e ciência, revelando faces inéditas da história de Leonardo. Desfazendo-se da aura de super-humano muitas vezes atribuída ao artista, Isaacson mostra que a genialidade de Leonardo estava fundamentada em características bastante palpáveis, como a curiosidade, uma enorme capacidade de observação e uma imaginação tão fértil que flertava com a fantasia. Leonardo criou duas das mais famosas obras de arte de todos os tempos, A Última Ceia e Mona Lisa, mas se considerava apenas um homem da ciência e da tecnologia - curiosamente, uma de suas maiores ambições era ser reconhecido como engenheiro militar. Com uma paixão que às vezes se tornava obsessiva, ele elaborou estudos inovadores de anatomia, fósseis, o voo dos pássaros, o coração, máquinas voadoras, botânica, geologia, hidráulica, armamentos e fortificações. A habilidade para entrelaçar humanidades e ciência, tornada icônica com o desenho do Homem vitruviano, fez dele o gênio mais criativo da história. Filho ilegítimo, à margem da educação formal, gay, vegetariano, canhoto, distraído e, por vezes, herético, o Leonardo desenhado nesta biografia é uma pessoa real, extraordinária pela pluralidade de interesses e pelo prazer que tinha em combiná-los. Um livro indispensável não só pelo caráter único de representar integralmente o artista Leonardo, mas como um retrato da capacidade humana de inovar, da importância de não apenas assimilar conhecimento, mas ter a disposição para questioná-lo, ser imaginativo e, como vários desajustados e rebeldes de todas as eras, pensar diferente.

The Price of Genius

Presents a portrait of Benjamin Franklin as a scientist, inventor, diplomat, writer, business strategist, and statesman while tracing his life as one of America's Founding Fathers.

An American Life

Benjamin Franklin

Em obra que é referência no segmento das biografias, autor conta a história da Revolução Digital. É curioso que a história dos computadores e da internet, ferramentas tão presentes em nosso dia a dia, seja tão pouco conhecida pela maioria das pessoas. E talvez mais interessante ainda seja o fato de, diferentemente de outras tecnologias revolucionárias a sua época, como o telefone e a lâmpada, essas invenções que mudaram a forma como vivemos serem em grande parte fruto de trabalho colaborativo. Desde Ada Lovelace, a filha de Lord Byron que no fim do século XIX foi pioneira da programação, passando por Vannevar Bush e Alan Turing, até chegar a gênios contemporâneos, como Bill Gates e Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson explora em Os inovadores as personalidades fascinantes que contribuíram para a atual Revolução Digital e suas conquistas mais significativas. Quais foram os talentos que permitiram aos inventores e empreendedores transformar suas ideias visionárias em realidades revolucionárias? O que fez com que eles concretizassem tais avanços criativos? Por que alguns foram bem-sucedidos e outros falharam? Os inovadores é uma saga magistral sobre como a colaboração entre criadores engenhosos estava destinada a compor a história da Revolução Digital — e também um guia indispensável sobre como a inovação de fato acontece. Aclamado pela crítica, o livro traça um panorama lúcido sobre como os principais responsáveis por essa revolução tecnológica não apenas colocaram suas ideias em prática, como também dominaram a arte do trabalho em equipe para potencializar ainda mais sua criatividade.

Walter Isaacson

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