STEVE JOBS By Walter Isaacson – Reviewed

Fans of Steve Jobs are likely to find much of this book uncompromising and possibly offensive, in its no-holds-barred look at the visionary behind Apple.

Despite Jobs’ obvious skills it appears he founded Apple on the back of the other Steve’s (Wosniak) invention of the Apple computer. Sure, Jobs had a hand in the design, and his powerful personality brought the commercial success of this and many later products, but he wasn’t the brain behind it, more the brain behind the brain.

Indeed as you read further Jobs becomes the powerhouse, the businessman and CEO of Pixar and again of Apple and his unrelenting determination to drive his staff to produce the best possible products is what makes Apple great.

The book follows Jobs rise and fall at Apple, his ten years in the wasteland of NEXT and the beginnings of Pixar. It doesn’t give much insight into how he developed his businesses, and it’s quite harsh on Jobs’ uncompromising nature. A nature that, when he was brought back to Apple and eventually took over, helped to create the world’s largest company (by market cap, positions have changed once again since the book was published).

Jobs comes off as a man of contradictions, a Buddhist interested in products, a foul-smelling, mean and uncompromising brat. A man who either loved or hated you, thought you were a genius or an idiot, and had little patience. A salesman, a visionary with the ability to see what people want before they know what it is they want. A control freak determined to perfect every single detail.

But his fierce determination to control everything is what lost him the company he built, it’s also what brought us products like the iPod, iPhone and iPad. Jobs’ successful return to Apple is where the book excel, although I would have liked even more detail. I remember the advertising campaigns from the 1984 one through to those of the dancing silhouette for the iPod and the new iPad adverts, I remember Adobe refusing to write software for the Macs and the original iMac which revolutionised PC design.

Jobs might not have been a particularly nice man, and from the book it doesn’t seem he mellowed much, despite his bouts of cancer and near death experiences, but he was an intelligent man who creates masterpieces of simplicity and genius design that makes Apple one of the most profitable, and now largest, computer manufacturers in the world. Jobs will be pleased that his legacy in Apple is a strong company, but where will they go without their glorious leader? Only time will time. Sadly for Steve, and for us, his time ended too soon.

THE SNOWBALL: WARREN BUFFETT AND THE BUSINESS OF LIFE By Alice Shroeder – Reviewed

Despite this being an epic book, I expected more.

How can you sum up the Oracle of Omaha? The most successful investor in the history of investing?

For a man over seventy years old, having his life described in a little over 700 pages gives us about a 100 pages per ten years. Even though the first page is so awash with description (of Buffett sitting in his office) that it’s difficult to read, what we don’t get in the full Warren Buffett. We get a version, the tight-fisted, thrifty, intelligent, teacher, who’s more at ease with numbers than he is with human beings, and certainly more comfortable dealing with a class room full of students than he is with his own children. A man obsessed with making money and keeping it. To the point where much of the time his family acted almost, but not quite, as a distraction, and Buffett doesn’t particularly like distractions.

The failure of this book is the lack of detail about some of Buffett’s investments. Probably the most important part of his life, not only for him but also for most of his readers. We get the glamorous stuff, and we also get the dirty stuff, but where’s the detail of the stuff that made him his money?

Most of the information contained in the book can be found on Buffett’s wikipedia entry. The details of his earlier life are interesting, and the milestones he achieved in his early years are quite extraordinary. But I want a map. I want to see what he invested in, at how much and why: I want a description of how he made his billions. I don’t understand how a book so huge and detailed about Buffett’s life but be so bereft of such important details.

For a financial analyst Shroeder doesn’t seem very interested in the money.

This is certainly an interesting book, and Warren’s life as a self-made man certainly holds your attention. But the missing details of his investments, the things that are skipped over, or just not even mentioned, serve to give us only half an image of this great investor.

Buffett is still my hero, with the knowledge gained from this book even more so. We share much in common, he had a paper-round, as did I. Buffett was making money as a child, as did I, once getting in trouble at school for telling my friends toys. Buffett also skirted a bit too close to the law, well, I’m refusing to comment on that! He was also buying shares before he was sixteen. I bought shares in my mother’s name because I was too young to have them in my own. Unfortunately, and I really don’t know what happened (perhaps discovering horror novels), but our paths diverged and I’m not a billionaire.

This is a personal and probably the most detailed of the books on Buffett, and yet it still doesn’t manage to capture the complete man. It does capture most of him, and it’s a moving story, but I almost feel short changed.

Amazing book, and yet still slightly disappointing.

THE RIDE OF A LIFETIME By Paul Teutil, Sr with Mark Yost – Reviewed

If you’re coming to this book as a fan of the show, as I was, if you’re thinking this is a business book, as I was, and are looking for insights into running your own business, as I was, then you’re in the wrong place.

This is a very basic management book. It contains very few business tips, there are a few time-worn management skills, many of which are basic common sense, and most of which are fairly obvious. The depth of the book, at nearly a hundred and fifty pages, isn’t worth mentioning. Reading the chapter titles will give you a very good idea of what to expect as Paul gives us his own person take on management. He’s obviously a big man with a good strong head on those broad shoulders, who tries to surround himself with good people.

He also has some serious issues with his parents and his troubled childhood, and he’s rightly proud of doing so well considering his upbringing and dealing with his own demons, in the form or drugs and alcohol, which he was addicted to for twenty years.

What comes across more than anything is that this is a hard-working man. He doesn’t have any special secrets or any special talent, but he does have the drive to succeed and a passion to do his best.

As a fan of OCC and American Choppers I can’t help but think of this as a cash-in. Perhaps not by Paul, who seems to think his wisdom is worth sharing, but more by the publishers, who haven’t pushed Paul at all to reveal how he managed to be a functioning alcoholic, and build two successful businesses.

If you’re looking for business insight then you would be better served with another book. If you’re looking for an OCC book then look elsewhere too. This is not a bad management book, but it’s not a bible, and it’s only one man’s opinion. And it’s very basic, barely backed up by experience.

This book is for those really interested in OCC and how Paul got started, and his management style. Which I would imagine is really only a few people.

The book doesn’t fail because of the OCC tie-up, it’s the only thing it has going for it. I can’t help thinking that as the season of American Chopper ends, with the family going in their separate direction, the future of OCC is going to be very different. Apart from the unknown daughter, the sons don’t particularly come out too well in the book either. And despite appearing so important to Senior in the book, the arguments and the way two of his sons are treated in the series and described in the book, it seems that his children won’t stand in the way of his success either. It seems that it is the end of OCC as it was, and that Senior is powering on by himself, and with his management tenets behind him, you have to worry that the future may well not be as bright as he thinks it is.