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Cover of The Innovators by Walter Isaacson

The Innovators

  • 583 pages · about 10 hours
  • First published 2014
  • 18 editions

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1 About this book

Following his blockbuster biography of Steve Jobs, The Innovators is Walter Isaacson’s revealing story of the people who created the computer and the Internet. It is destined to be the standard history of the digital revolution and an indispensable guide to how innovation really happens.

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? In his masterly saga, Isaacson begins 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.

Good for readers who want: a true life story, history, business, and a long read.

  • Biography
  • History
  • Computer science
  • Biography & autobiography
  • Science & Technology
  • Business & economics
  • Technology & engineering
  • Scientists, biography

2 About Walter Isaacson

Born 1952

Walter Seff Isaacson (born May 20, 1952) is an American journalist who has written biographies of Henry Kissinger, Benjamin Franklin, Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, Jennifer Doudna, and Elon Musk. As of 2024, Isaacson is a professor at Tulane University and, since 2018, an interviewer for the PBS and CNN news show Amanpour & Company.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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