Synopses & Reviews
Following his blockbuster biography of Steve Jobs, The Innovators is Walter Isaacson's biographical story of the pioneers of the computer and the Internet. It is destined to be the standard history of the digital revolution and a guide to how innovation really works. The computer and the Internet are among the most important inventions of our era, but few people know who created them. They were not conjured up in a garret or garage by solo inventors. Instead, most innovations of the digital age were made collaboratively. There were a lot of fascinating people involved, some ingenious and a few even geniuses. This is the story of these pioneers, hackers, and entrepreneurs -- how their minds worked and what made them so creative. It's also a narrative of how their ability to work as teams made them even "more" creative.In his exciting saga, Isaacson begins with Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's daughter, who described a general-purpose computer and software programming in the 1840s. The Innovators is filled with fascinating personalities'from early pioneers such as Vannevar Bush, Alan Turing, John von Neumann, Doug Engelbart, Robert Noyce, and Gordon Moore, to Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak and Larry Page. The central digital innovations, Isaacson shows, have come from those who, like Ada, have connected the humanities to technology and the arts to the sciences.
Review
"[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
Review
"A sprawling companion to his best-selling Steve Jobs...this kaleidoscopic narrative serves to explain the stepwise development of 10 core innovations of the digital age — from mathematical logic to transistors, video games and the Web — as well as to illustrate the exemplary traits of their makers....Isaacson unequivocally demonstrates the power of collaborative labor and the interplay between companies and their broader ecosystems....The Innovators is the most accessible and comprehensive history of its kind."
The Washington Post
Review
"Isaacson provides a sweeping and scintillating narrative of the inventors, engineers and entrepreneurs who have given the world computers and the Internet....a near-perfect marriage of author and subject...an informative and accessible account of the translation of computers, programming, transistors, micro-processors, the Internet, software, PCs, the World Wide Web and search engines from idea into reality....[a] masterful book."
San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"A panoramic history of technological revolution...a sweeping, thrilling tale....Throughout his action-packed story, Isaacson...offers vivid portraits — many based on firsthand interviews — [and] weaves prodigious research and deftly crafted anecdotes into a vigorous, gripping narrative about the visionaries whose imaginations and zeal continue to transform our lives."
Kirkus Reviews, starred review
Review
"A remarkable overview of the history of computers from the man who brought us biographies of Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, and Henry Kissinger....Isaacson manages to bring together the entire universe of computing, from the first digitized loom to the web, presented in a very accessible manner that often reads like a thriller."
Booklist (starred review)
Review
"Anyone who uses a computer in any of its contemporary shapes or who has an interest in modern history will enjoy this book."
Library Journal (starred review)
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About the Author
Walter Isaacson, the CEO of the Aspen Institute, has been chairman of CNN and the managing editor of Time magazine. He is the author of Steve Jobs and Einstein: His Life and Universe, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, and Kissinger: A Biography, and the co-author of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. He lives in Washington, DC.