| Walter Isaacson | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 20, 1952 New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. |
| Residence | Washington, DC |
| Occupation | Author |
| Spouse | Cathy Isaacson |
Walter Isaacson (born May 20, 1952) is a writer and biographer. He is the President and CEO of the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C. He has been the Chairman and CEO of CNN and the Managing Editor of TIME. He was appointed by President Obama to be the Chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which runs Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and the other international broadcasts of the U.S. government.[1] He has also been known for writing several biographies including the biography of the diplomat Benjamin Franklin, the physicist Albert Einstein and his latest biography about late Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs.
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Walter Isaacson was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. After graduating from New Orleans' Isidore Newman School and a summer at Deep Springs College as a participant in the Telluride Association Summer Program (TASP), Isaacson attended Harvard College and earned a B. A. in history and literature. While at Harvard, Isaacson was a member of the Harvard Lampoon. He then attended the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar at Pembroke College and read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.
Walter Isaacson began his career in journalism at The Sunday Times of London and then the New Orleans Times-Picayune/States-Item. He joined TIME in 1978 and served as a political correspondent, national editor, and editor of new media before becoming the magazine's fourteenth editor in 1996. He became Chairman and CEO of CNN in 2001, and then president and CEO of the Aspen Institute in 2003.
He is the author of American Sketches (2009), Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007),[2] Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2003) and Kissinger: A Biography (1992), and he is the co-author, with Evan Thomas, of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (1986). He is the editor of Profiles in Leadership: Historians on the Elusive Quality of Greatness (2010, W. W. Norton).
On October 24, 2011, Isaacson's authorized biography of Apple Computer co-founder Steve Jobs was published by Simon & Schuster. Because of Jobs' death just weeks earlier (on October 5, 2011), Steve Jobs became an instant international best-seller, breaking all records for sales of a biography. The book was based on over forty interviews with Jobs over a two year period right up until shortly before his death. Isaacson also drew on conversations with friends, family members, and even business rivals of the entrepreneur whose vision revolutionized computing, music, phones, animated films, and even publishing.
He is the chairman of the board of Teach for America and of the Broadcasting Board of Governors. He is on the boards of United Airlines, Tulane University, Overseers of Harvard University, the Bloomberg Family Foundation, and the Society of American Historians.
In October 2005, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco appointed Isaacson vice chairman of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, a thirty-three-member policymaking board that oversaw spending on the recovery from Hurricane Katrina. In December 2007, he was appointed by President George W. Bush to the chairman of the U.S.-Palestinian Partnership, which seeks to create economic and educational opportunities in the Palestinian territories.[3] Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appointed him vice-chair of the Partners for a New Beginning, which encourages private-sector investments and partnerships in the Muslim world.[4] He also serves as the cochair of the U.S.-Vietnamese Dialogue on Agent Orange, which in January 2008 announced completion of a project to contain the dioxin left behind by the U.S. at the Da Nang air base and plans to build health centers and a dioxin laboratory in the affected regions.[5]
Isaacson had been working on a biography of Apple CEO Steve Jobs since 2005, the first biography of Jobs written with his full cooperation, with Jobs granting extensive interviews of himself, friends, enemies, and family members, wanting nothing to be kept from the public. Pre-orders of the book skyrocketed to the number one position at Amazon.com after news of Jobs' death broke. Steve Jobs was published on October 24, 2011 by Simon & Schuster. [6][7][8][9]