Steve Jobs: Insanely Great

Steve Jobs: Insanely Great is a pretty celebratory title for a book, and from you see in the first image of the book, the whole enterprise is a love letter to the man:

It hits all the highlights from his life, a true biography that takes him from his being born and adopted to his enterprising childhood and adolescence when his tinkering and playing around with gadgets and machines was encouraged.

Of course, he goes on to many great things, including making personal computers attractive and available for the average person, co-founding one of the world's largest companies, Apple, as well as being instrumental in the success of Pixar, one of today's most lucrative and lauded animation studios. Those alone would make for an excellent resume for anyone, but he also had a huge hand in creating devices that have changed the way we interact with the world, namely the iPod, iPad, iPhone, and iTunes.

The book also describes some of his not so positive attributes, namely his extreme perfectionism and blunt talk that often alienated those around him, but it mainly focuses on the good he did. Those looking for a more critical or nuanced biography should probably look elsewhere. Still, I think it is a great elementary introduction to the man and his works, and it has a few other features that recommend it. The artwork is appealing, breezy, and whimsical. There are sequences that demarcate decades and show what devices were invented and commonly used the, which I think is a very helpful thing for younger readers to see. And the entire narrative is cleanly told.

This book is the creation of Jessie Hartland, an accomplished commercial artist and children's book illustrator. Her prior books include nonfiction about dinosaurs, meteorites, and a biography of Julia Child. She speaks much more about her work on the Jobs' biography here.

All of the reviews I have read about this book have been positive. Andrew Hayward wrote, "The book is nuanced without being sprawling; comprehensive but not exhaustive—or exhausting, for that matter." J. Caleb Mozzocco summed up, "I don’t know I’d go so far as to call it insanely great, but it’s pretty great, and a perfect place for anyone interested in Jobs, regardless of their age or sophistication, to start learning about the pivotal figure." Kirkus Reviews was in agreement, concluding, "Nothing new or revelatory here, but the book can serve as a good introduction to Jobs and will impress with its concision those who already know a lot about him."

Steve Jobs: Insanely Great was published by Schwartz & Wade, and they have a preview and more information about the book here.

Wizzywig

Kevin Phenicle is a slight, nerdy adolescent who gets picked on by his peers and who lives with his grandmother. He does not look like much of a threat to anyone. But as "Boingthump," Kevin gets into all kinds of mischief and mayhem. He copies and sells pirate versions of popular computer games. He scams the phone company so he can make all kinds of free calls. He gains access to classified databases. He rigs phones so he wins radio station contests. He invents computer viruses and worms. As a hacker, he finds himself the target of FBI sting operations, ends up imprisoned multiple times, and spends much of his life on the run from the authorities.

Boingthump is a fictional amalgam of a character, with attributes of many famous hackers. He is based mainly on former fugitives Kevin Mitnick and Kevin Poulsen, but he also runs some famous scams perpetrated by legends like Cap'n Crunch, Captain Zap, and Phiber Optik. He even gets credited for an infamous TV jamming scheme. Although Boingthump perpetrates many criminal acts, he appears as a sympathetic figure in this book. It is difficult not to root for him when it seems he is really trying to infiltrate and hoodwink monolithic authorities. Having the support of a friendly radio DJ advocate helps make him seem less unsavory, as does the stark contrasts with an oily TV newsman who capitalizes on Boingthump's notoriety and the thuggish figures who antagonize him, embodied by federal agents and prison inmates.

The contents of this book first appeared serialized as a webcomic, which is still available online. Creator Ed Piskor is best known for multiple collaborations with Harvey Pekar on American Splendor as well as The Beats: A Graphic History. A prolific modern creator whose style is reminiscent of underground comix, he is currently working on a Hip Hop Family Tree webcomic. Piskor talks more about his work on this graphic novel in this interview with IFC.

This book definitely has much to add to the discussion about the benefits and drawbacks of technology hacking. Reviews of it I have read have been very positive. Wired Magazine's Steven Levy called this story "a delight, wryly rendered and packed with dead-on details of the hacker life." Comics Should Be Good's Sonia Harris wrote that "the book is beautiful, a lovely experience to read, made with much love and attention to detail" and well worth buying. The Onion's A.V. Club Comic Panel concluded that Piskor's "passion for the subject jumps off the page, making Wizzywig both an entertaining read and a powerful argument-starter."

A preview and more can be found here from the book's publisher Top Shelf.