Steve Jobs

Gr 5–7—Drawing on the posthumous "authorized" biography of Jobs as well as an array of older print and online publications, Ziller presents a glowing portrait of the late great entrepreneur as a technological visionary who stood and directed traffic "at the intersection of science and art." Though making reference, in downplayed ways, to his rocky personal relationships and abrasive behavior toward employees, the author shines a more direct light on her subject's business triumphs, his manic focus, and appreciative comments by those who knew and worked with him. Closing sections of Jobsian sound bites and passages from various eulogies extend the adulation. Though Ziller sometimes exaggerates (Jobs did not "start" Pixar, though he certainly did transform it), in general, she sticks to the documentary evidence, serving up a coherent, if somewhat simplistic, picture of a man whose influence on American business and the technological revolution would be hard to overestimate.—John Peters, formerly at New York Public Library