We all know about Steve Jobs, legendary CEO of Apple who oversaw the earliest personal computers, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. His life has been written about and adapted numerous times – several films, many biographies, and lots and lots of internet articles. But, Steve never wrote an autobiography, so we never got to see directly what he thought of his life. The book I finished this week, Make Something Wonderful, is a free ebook available from the Steve Jobs Archive. It is a compilation of Steve’s emails, speeches, and interviews from different periods of his life, with some linking narration between sections to “set the scene” for what is to come.

The aim of the book, as suggested by the title, is to encourage everyone to be more creative with their lives. It is hard not to be optimistic when you read Steve’s speeches and emails. His vision for what the world could look like, at the intersection of technology and creativity, is amazing. The emails are perhaps the most interesting part of the book: towards the end of the book, we see Steve’s drafts of a speech he would give at Stanford, before reading the actual (ultimately much different speech). Another favourite was the inclusion of Steve providing technical support to a family who emailed him about a faulty iPod. One interview discusses how Steve was just so aware of what the world could look like, and his success came from forcing those realities into existence. It is hard not to be inspired when reading the book.

A major theme throughout the book is the importance of serendipity. Several times, Steve discusses how he sat in on a calligraphy course at Reed College, where he learned about typography – the best way to format texts. This then developed into fonts and typesetting on the early Apple computers, which were copied by every other computer company. Arts get a lot of flack in higher education; critics often decry the importance of these courses, saying that they are never useful in real life. This is a clear counter-example: had Steve never taken this course on how to make writing look pretty, we may never have gotten Microsoft Office, or moved past typewriters for typesetting. You never know what these small decisions can build into.

A few negatives for me were that some major parts of Steve’s life are excluded. There is a fair bit on his early days at Apple, leaving to start NeXT and Pixar, and his return to Apple. After this return to Apple, we proceed very quickly to his death. There’s a small section on the iPhone, but basically nothing on the iPod (other than a playlist of Steve’s favourite songs) and nothing again on the iPad. As a musician, the way the introduction of the iPod was one of the most important developments in the music industry. I realise that isn’t the point of this book, but I thought such a significant product deserved more of a place here. Also, given that there is very little narration, the majority of the book is only going to focus on Steve’s life. If you are interested in criticism or analysis, this is the wrong book. It’s a collection of primary sources, for your own analysis!

If you’d like to read the book, you can read it online or download the file for your e-reader here.