After a series of unauthorized biographies, Apple (AAPL) co-founder and chief executive officer Steve Jobs has finally granted his permission for a telling his of life’s story.
iSteve: A Book of Jobs will be released in early 2012 by biographer Walter Isaacson, who has published biographies about Benjamin Franklin and Henry Kissinger. Isaacson has spent three years “interviewing Jobs, his family members, Apple colleagues, and competitors to write this book,” according to the Associated Press.
Most recently, Jobs earlier this year took a leave of absence from Apple as he battles what is believed to be a rare form of pancreatic cancer. He was on-hand to reveal the iPad 2 in early March, and in public continues to be one of America’s greatest showmen.
In private is a different matter.
“In 2005, Apple refused to carry any books by John Wiley & Sons, because it signed on to publish the unauthorized biography iCon: Steve Jobs, The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business,” according to an article on NPR’s website.
Spokeswoman for Simon & Schuster, the upcoming book’s publisher, said no further details are currently available and that neither Jobs nor Isaacson would be commenting on the venture.
The AP adds that few biographers are better connected than Isaacson, a former top executive at CNN and Time magazine who has written best-sellers about Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein. He is currently the president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, a “nonpartisan educational and policy studies institute” in Washington, D.C.
“This is the perfect match of subject and author, and it is certain to be a landmark book about one of the world’s greatest innovators,” Jonathan Karp, publisher of Simon & Schuster, said in a statement. “Just as he did with Einstein and Benjamin Franklin, Walter Isaacson is telling a unique story of revolutionary genius.”
While iSteve will almost surely be a good read and reveal insight about Jobs that we haven’t learned before, how much detail it will get into remains to be seen. In journalism, the price for access is usually to stay within the parameters defined by the subject one is covering.
Is Isaacson up to the task? Stay tuned.
