The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution - Softcover

Isaacson, Walter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1476708703 ISBN 13: 9781476708706

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2015

Synopsis

Following his blockbuster biography of Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson's New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed The Innovators is a "riveting, propulsive, and at times deeply moving" (The Atlantic) story of the people who created the computer and the Internet.

What were the talents that allowed certain inventors and entrepreneurs to turn their visionary ideas into disruptive realities? What led to their creative leaps? Why did some succeed and others fail?

The Innovators is a masterly saga of collaborative genius destined to be the standard history of the digital revolution--and an indispensable guide to how innovation really happens. Isaacson begins the adventure with Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's daughter, who pioneered computer programming in the 1840s. He explores the fascinating personalities that created our current digital revolution, such as Vannevar Bush, Alan Turing, John von Neumann, J.C.R. Licklider, Doug Engelbart, Robert Noyce, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, Tim Berners-Lee, and Larry Page.

This is the story of how their minds worked and what made them so inventive. It's also a narrative of how their ability to collaborate and master the art of teamwork made them even more creative. For an era that seeks to foster innovation, creativity, and teamwork, The Innovators is "a sweeping and surprisingly tenderhearted history of the digital age" (The New York Times).

About this title

Review

"The Innovators . . . is riveting, propulsive and at times deeply moving. . . . One of Isaacson's jealousy-provoking gifts is his ability to translate complicated science into English--those who have read his biographies of Einstein and Steve Jobs understand that Isaacson is a kind of walking Rosetta Stone of physics and computer programming. . . . The Innovators is one of the most organically optimistic books I think I've ever read. It is a stirring reminder of what Americans are capable of doing when they think big, risk failure, and work together."
--Jeffrey Goldberg "The Atlantic "

"Walter Isaacson has written an inspiring book about genius, this time explaining how creativity and success come from collaboration. The Innovators is a fascinating history of the digital revolution, including the critical but often forgotten role women played from the beginning. It offers truly valuable lessons in how to work together to achieve great results."--Sheryl Sandberg

"Mr. Isaacson's fine new book, The Innovators, is a serial biography of the large number of ingenious scientists and engineers who, you might say, led up to Jobs and his Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak."--Steven Shapin "Wall Street Journal "

"Walter Isaacson is the best possible guide to this storm. He interrupted work on [The Innovators] book to write the standard biography of Steve Jobs, having previously written lives of Einstein, Benjamin Franklin and Kissinger. His approach involves massive research combined with straight, unadorned prose and a matter-of-fact storytelling style. . . . the directness of his approach makes for clarity and pace."--Bryan Appleyard "The Sunday Times "

"[Isaacson's] careful, well-organized book, written in lucid prose accessible to even the most science-challenged, is well worth reading for its capable survey of the myriad strands that intertwined to form the brave new, ultra-connected world we live in today."--TheDailyBeast.com

"If you think you know everything about computers, read The Innovators. Surprises await on every page."--Houston Chronicle

"[A] tour d'horizon of the computer age . . . [The Innovators] presents a deeply comforting, humanistic vision: of how a succession of brilliant individuals, often working together in mutually supportive groups, built on each others' ideas to create a pervasive digital culture in which man and machine live together in amicable symbiosis. . . . a fresh perspective on the birth of the information age."--Financial Times

"The argument against the great man theory of invention is not new. But the main merit of Walter Isaacson's The Innovators is to show that this is particularly true in information technology--despite the customary lionisation of many of its pioneers, from Babbage and Alan Turing to Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds. . . . Mr Isaacson excels at explaining complex concepts."--The Economist

"a significant addition to [Isaacson's] list of best-selling nonfiction works with The Innovators. . . . Isaacson thoroughly examines the lives of such landmark personalities as Alan Turing, John von Neumann, J.C.R. Licklider, Robert Noyce, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Tim Berners-Lee, Jobs and others. The most well-read of technocrats will still learn a lot from these thoroughly researched 542 pages. He shows with repeated examples that an Aha moment often went nowhere without the necessary collaborators to help flesh out the idea, or make it producible, or sell it. Collaboration is, indeed, a major theme of the book. . . . [The Innovators] reads as easily as the best of them. Isaacson truly has earned his spot on the best-seller lists."--Charleston Post and Courier

"[A] sweeping and surprisingly tenderhearted history of the digital age . . . absorbing and valuable, and Isaacson's outsize narrative talents are on full display. Few authors are more adept at translating technical jargon into graceful prose, or at illustrating how hubris and greed can cause geniuses to lose their way. . . . The book evinces a genuine affection for its subjects that makes it tough to resist . . . his book is thus most memorable not for its intricate accounts of astounding breakthroughs and the business dramas that followed, but rather for the quieter moments in which we realize that most primal drive for innovators is a need to feel childlike joy."--New York Times Book Review

About the Author

Walter Isaacson, the CEO of the Aspen Institute, has been chairman of CNN and editor of "Time" magazine. He is the author of "Steve Jobs"; "Einstein: His Life and Universe"; "Benjamin Franklin: An American Life"; and "Kissinger: A Biography"; and the coauthor of "The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made." He lives in Washington, DC.

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1476708703
• ISBN 13: 9781476708706
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 560