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The Steve Jobs bio: Coming right up

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The official biography of Steve Jobs will be out next week. The publication date, originally slated for 2012, was moved up -- but ‘Steve Jobs’ the book did not reach shelves before Jobs died of cancer on Oct. 5.

The Apple founder had been working with biographer Walter Isaacson since at least 2009; friends and family had cooperated with the author to tell Jobs’ story. Isaacson appears on ’60 Minutes’ on Sunday, where he’ll talk about the book and his process. In one clip Isaacson says that Jobs’ decision to try alternative treatments may have been a mistake. Our Technology blog reports:

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According to Isaacson, Jobs had a ‘very slow-growing’ type of pancreatic cancer ‘that can actually be cured,’ but still opted not to get the surgery until nine months had gone by and it may have been too late. ‘I’ve asked him’ why he didn’t get the operation, Isaacson told Steve Kroft of ’60 Minutes.’ ‘And he said, ‘I didn’t want my body to be opened. … I didn’t want to be violated in that way.’ I think that he kind of felt that if you ignore something, if you don’t want something to exist, you can have magical thinking. It’d work[ed] for him in the past. He’d regret it.’

More bits and pieces of the book are finding their way into the public eye. The Associated Press reports that Jobs ranted about a Google Android phone that he thought was too close to Apple’s.

Apple sued, and Jobs told Isaacson in an expletive-laced rant that Google’s actions amounted to “grand theft.” “I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,” Jobs said. “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”

In the wake of Jobs’ death, his insight, wisdom and vision have been well-remembered. Above, he gives a smart and thoughtful commencement address to Stanford students in 2005. But the ‘thermonuclear’ comment shows Jobs was also a very driven businessman; it looks like Isaacson, who has also written biographies of Henry Kissinger and Albert Einstein, may have captured a full picture of him.

‘Steve Jobs’ by Walter Isaacson remains the No. 1-selling book at Amazon. It’s been in the top 10 for 42 days.

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Authorized biography of Steve Jobs will be called ‘iSteve.’ iSeriously.

Authorizes Steve Jobs bio ‘iSteve’ -- coming in 2012 -- is already an Amazon bestseller

-- Carolyn Kellogg

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