Best Selling Books by Walter Isaacson

During his 84-year life Benjamin Franklin was America''s best scientist, inventor, publisher, business strategist, diplomat, and writer. He was also one of its most practical political thinkers. America''s first great publicist, he carefully crafted his own persona, portrayed it in public and polished it for posterity. In this riveting new biography Walter Isaacson provides readers with a full portrait of Franklin''s public and private life - his loyal but neglected wife, his bastard son with whom he broke over going to war with England, his endless replacement families and his many amorous, but probably unconsummated, liaisons. But this is not just a biography of Benjamin Franklin but rather a fascinating look at American and European political history at that time. Isaacson examines the run up to the Revolutionary War, the intimate relations between Britain, France and the colonies and the decisive events that led to America''s independence. Just as David McCullough brought life to the historic figure of John Adams, Isaacson portrays Franklin in the flesh, showing readers how this radical man helped define America''s national character and personality.

The Genius Biographies boxed set from New York Times bestselling author Walter Isaacson featuring his definitive biographies: Steve Jobs, Einstein, and Benjamin Franklin. “If anybody in America understands genius, it’s Walter Isaacson.” —Salon Walter Isaacson''s beloved biographies of American geniuses—now in one boxed set: Steve Jobs: The riveting biography of legendary Apple cofounder Steve Jobs. The story of the roller-coaster life and intense creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing. Isaacson’s portrait touched millions of readers. Einstein: How did his mind work? What made him a genius? Isaacson’s biography of Albert Einstein shows how his scientific imagination sprang from the rebellious nature of his personality. His fascinating story is a testament to the connection between creativity and freedom. Benjamin Franklin: In this colorful and intimate narrative, Isaacson provides the full sweep of Ben Franklin’s amazing life, showing how the most fascinating Founding Father helped forge the American national identity.

"FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE BESTSELLING BIOGRAPHIES OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND ALBERT EINSTEIN, THIS IS THE EXCLUSIVE BIOGRAPHY OF STEVE JOBS. Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years--as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues--Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing. At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, and when societies around the world are trying to build digital-age economies, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering. Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted. Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple''s hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values"--

NOW A MAJOR SERIES ''GENIUS'' ON NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, PRODUCED BY RON HOWARD AND STARRING GEOFFREY RUSH Einstein is the great icon of our age: the kindly refugee from oppression whose wild halo of hair, twinkling eyes, engaging humanity and extraordinary brilliance made his face a symbol and his name a synonym for genius. He was a rebel and nonconformist from boyhood days. His character, creativity and imagination were related, and they drove both his life and his science. In this marvellously clear and accessible narrative, Walter Isaacson explains how his mind worked and the mysteries of the universe that he discovered. Einstein''s success came from questioning conventional wisdom and marvelling at mysteries that struck others as mundane. This led him to embrace a worldview based on respect for free spirits and free individuals. All of which helped make Einstein into a rebel but with a reverence for the harmony of nature, one with just the right blend of imagination and wisdom to transform our understanding of the universe. This new biography, the first since all of Einstein''s papers have become available, is the fullest picture yet of one of the key figures of the twentieth century. This is the first full biography of Albert Einstein since all of his papers have become available -- a fully realised portrait of this extraordinary human being, and great genius. Praise for EINSTEIN by Walter Isaacson:- ''YOU REALLY MUST READ THIS.'' Sunday Times ''As pithy as Einstein himself.’ New Scientist ‘[A] brilliant biography, rich with newly available archival material.’ Literary Review ‘Beautifully written, it renders the physics understandable.’ Sunday Telegraph ‘Isaacson is excellent at explaining the science. '' Daily Express

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, the author 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. He 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. He 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.

#1 New York Times non-fiction bestseller #2 Sunday Times non-fiction bestseller SHORTLISTED FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD CHOSEN AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR BY APPLE, AMAZON, THE TIMES AND FINANCIAL TIMES Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk offers the most intimate, complete and revelatory portrait of the most fascinating and controversial innovator in the world. For two years, Isaacson had unprecedented access to Musk, his workplaces, his family, friends, coworkers and adversaries – nothing was off-limits. Musk’s journey from humble beginnings to one of the wealthiest people on the planet is a thrilling, mind-bending story and nobody could tell it better. Filled with amazing tales of triumph and turmoil, and lessons about leadership and business, it ultimately addresses the question everyone wants to ask: why is Elon Musk so successful? This book includes over 100 integrated black and white images.

As his parents finished packing the few personal belongings they were permitted to take out of Germany, the bespectacled 15-year-old stood in the corner of the apartment memorizing the details of the scene. He was a bookish and reflective child, with that odd mixture of ego and insecurity that can come from growing up smart yet persecuted. "I''ll be back someday," he said to the customs inspector who was surveying the boxes. Years later, he would recall how the official looked at him "with the disdain of age" and said nothing. Henry Kissinger was right: he did come back to his Bavarian birthplace, first as a soldier with the U.S. Army counterintelligence corps, then as a renowned scholar of international relations, and eventually as the dominant statesman of his era. By the time he was made secretary of state in 1973, he had become, according to the Gallup Poll, the most admired person in America. In addition, as he conducted foreign policy with the air of a guest of honor at a cocktail party, he became one of the most unlikely celebrities ever to capture the world''s imagination. Yet Kissinger was reviled by large segments of the American public, ranging from liberal intellectuals to conservative activists, who in varying ways considered him a Strangelovean power manipulator dangerously devoid of moral principles. Kissinger''s power-oriented approach to global politics resulted in a messy conclusion to the Vietnam War that included the secret bombing and invasion of Cambodia and the Christmas bombing of Hanoi. Yet he was also able to design a triangular balance based on detente with Russia and an opening to China that preserved America''s influence in the world. He had an instinctive feel for power, but it was not matched by a feel for the openness of America''s democratic system or for the moral values that are a basic source of its world influence. This book, the first full biography of Kissinger, explores the relationship between his complex personality - brilliant, conspiratorial, furtive, prone to power struggles, charming yet at times deceitful - and the foreign policy he pursued. It draws on extensive interviews with Kissinger as well as 150 other sources, including Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, H.R. Haldeman, former South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu, Russian diplomats, cabinet colleagues, disillusioned aides, childhood friends, and business clients. In addition, it makes use of many of Kissinger''s private papers, personal letters, recorded telephone conversations, his desk diaries and those of various officials, memos of classified meetings, and transcripts of FBI wiretaps. The result is an intimate narrative, filled with surprising revelations, that takes this century''s most colorful statesman from his childhood as a persecuted Jew in Nazi Germany, through his tortured relationship with Richard Nixon, to his twilight years as a globe-trotting business consultant.

Chronicles the lives and careers of the men and women responsible for the creation of the digital age, including Doug Englebart, Robert Noyce, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and more.

"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"--

Now a docuseries from Ken Burns on PBS! The #1 New York Times bestseller from Walter Isaacson brings Leonardo da Vinci to life in this exciting new biography that is “a study in creativity: how to define it, how to achieve it…Most important, it is a powerful story of an exhilarating mind and life” (The New Yorker). Based on thousands of pages from Leonardo da Vinci’s astonishing notebooks and new discoveries about his life and work, Walter Isaacson “deftly reveals an intimate Leonardo” (San Francisco Chronicle) in 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. He produced the two most famous paintings in history, The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa. With a passion that sometimes became obsessive, he pursued innovative studies of anatomy, fossils, birds, the heart, flying machines, botany, geology, and weaponry. He explored the math of optics, showed how light rays strike the cornea, and produced illusions of changing perspectives in The Last Supper. His ability to stand at the crossroads of the humanities and the sciences, made iconic by his drawing of Vitruvian Man, made him history’s most creative genius. In the “luminous” (Daily Beast) Leonardo da Vinci, Isaacson describes how Leonardo’s delight at combining diverse passions remains the ultimate recipe for creativity. So, too, does his ease at being a bit of a misfit: illegitimate, gay, vegetarian, left-handed, easily distracted, and at times heretical. His life should remind us of the importance to be imaginative and, like talented rebels in any era, to think different. Here, da Vinci “comes to life in all his remarkable brilliance and oddity in Walter Isaacson’s ambitious new biography…a vigorous, insightful portrait” (The Washington Post).

A selection of Benjamin Franklin’s writings, with an introduction and commentary by renowned author Walter Isaacson. Selected and annotated by the author of the acclaimed Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, this collection of Franklin’s writings shows why he was the bestselling author of his day and remains America’s favorite founder and wit. Includes an introductory essay exploring Franklin’s life and impact as a writer, and each piece is accompanied by a preface and notes that provide background, context, and analysis.

"To celebrate America''s 250th anniversary, Walter Isaacson takes readers on a ... deep dive into the creation of one of history''s most powerful sentences: ''We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.'' Drafted by Thomas Jefferson and edited by Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, this line lays the foundation for the American Dream and defines the common ground we share as a nation. Isaacson unpacks its genius, word by word, illuminating the then-radical concepts behind it"--

With a new introduction by the authors, this is the classic account of the American statesmen who rebuilt the world after the catastrophe of World War II. A captivating blend of personal biography and public drama, The Wise Men introduces six close friends who shaped the role their country would play in the dangerous years following World War II. They were the original best and brightest, whose towering intellects, outsize personalities, and dramatic actions would bring order to the postwar chaos and leave a legacy that dominates American policy to this day. The Wise Men shares the stories of 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.

This includes the exclusive biography of Steve Jobs and bestselling biographies Benjamin Franklin and Einstein.