14 books that inspired Steve Jobs by Drake Baer and Shana Lebowitz on Oct 28, 2015, 3:15 PM Advertisement
 Why did Apple 'think different?' Because, Steve Jobs said while introducing the iPad, the Mac maker was never just a tech company. "The reason that Apple is able to create products like the iPad is because we've always tried to be at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts," he said. Jobs' lifelong interest in the humanities gave Apple a human touch. By combining tech and the liberal arts, Jobs said that Apple was able to "to make extremely advanced products from a technology point of view, but also have them be intuitive, easy-to-use, fun-to-use, so that they really fit the users." Jobs arrived at that perspective through a lifetime of reading, as reviewed in Walter Isaacson's biography and other places. We've put together a list of 14 books that most inspired him. SEE ALSO: 17 books Bill Gates thinks everyone should read 'King Lear' by William Shakespeare  Jobs really began his literary bent in the last two years of high school. "I started to listen to music a whole lot," he told Isaacson, "and I started to read more outside of just science and technology — Shakespeare, Plato. I loved 'King Lear.'" The tragedy may have provided a cautionary tale to a young Jobs, since it's the story of an aged monarch going crazy trying to divide up his kingdom. "'King Lear' offers a vivid depiction of what can go wrong if you lose your grip on your empire, a story surely fascinating to any aspiring CEO," says Daniel Smith, author of "How to Think Like Steve Jobs." Buy it here »
'Moby Dick' by Herman Melville  Another epic story colored Jobs' outlook in his adolescence: "Moby Dick," the deeply American novel by Herman Melville. Isaacson draws a connection between Captain Ahab, who's one of the most driven and willful characters in literature, and Jobs. Ahab, like Jobs, did lots of his learning from direct experience, rather than relying on institutions. "I prospectively ascribe all the honour and the glory to whaling," the captain writes early in the story, "for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard." Buy it here »
'The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas' by Dylan Thomas  But the intellectual flowering that Jobs had in late high school wasn't confined to hard-charging megalomaniacs — he also discovered a love for verse, particularly Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. "How To Think Like Steve Jobs" author Daniel Smith says that Thomas' poems "drew him in with its striking new forms and unerringly popular touch." "Do not go gentle" became a reported favorite: Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night. Buy it here »
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