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Walter Isaacson

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The Biographer Who Gets the Call

There's a peculiar kind of immortality that comes from being the person everyone wants to tell their story to. Walter Isaacson has become that person. When Steve Jobs knew he was dying, he called Isaacson. When Elon Musk decided the world needed to understand him, he called Isaacson. Somewhere in the afterlife, one imagines Benjamin Franklin and Leonardo da Vinci wishing they'd had the option.

This is the strange career of Walter Isaacson: a man who has made himself indispensable to genius.

Born in New Orleans in 1952, Isaacson grew up in a household shaped by two very different kinds of practical intelligence. His father was an electrical and mechanical engineer, the sort of person who understood how things worked at the level of circuits and gears. His mother was a real estate broker, someone who understood how things worked at the level of human desire and negotiation. These twin inheritances—the technical and the social—would define Isaacson's approach to biography for decades to come.

The Making of a Biographer

Isaacson's education reads like a checklist of elite credentials. He attended Isidore Newman School in New Orleans, where he was student body president, then Harvard, where he majored in history and literature. At Harvard, he became president of the Signet Society, a literary club whose members have included T.S. Eliot and Norman Mailer. He wrote for the Harvard Lampoon, the humor magazine that has produced everyone from Conan O'Brien to B.J. Novak.

Then came Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.

The Rhodes Scholarship is one of the most prestigious academic awards in the world, established in 1902 by the will of Cecil Rhodes to bring outstanding students to Oxford University. At Pembroke College, Isaacson studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics—a degree known simply as "PPE" that has produced more British prime ministers than any other course. He graduated with first-class honours, the highest classification available.

But here's what's interesting: despite all this academic firepower, Isaacson didn't become an academic. He became a journalist.

The Magazine Years

Isaacson's first job was at The Sunday Times in London, followed by a stint at his hometown paper, the New Orleans Times-Picayune. In 1978, he joined Time magazine, then one of the most influential publications in America. To understand what this meant, you have to remember what magazines were before the internet: they were how America understood itself. Time's cover could make or break a politician, launch a movement, or kill a career.

Isaacson climbed steadily. Political correspondent. National editor. Editor of new media—a position that barely existed when he took it. In 1996, he became Time's fourteenth editor, putting him in control of an institution that had shaped American opinion since 1923.

Then came television.

In July 2001, Isaacson became chairman and CEO of CNN, the Cable News Network. Two months later, he found himself guiding the network through September 11th. The timing was either terrible luck or a crucible that would define his leadership—perhaps both.

His tenure at CNN proved controversial. Shortly after taking over, Isaacson met with Republican leaders on Capitol Hill to discuss their concerns that CNN was unfair to conservatives. He was quoted saying he wanted "to hear their concerns." The media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting criticized this as "pandering," arguing that it gave politicians inappropriate power over news coverage.

Whatever the merits of that debate, Isaacson didn't stay long enough for it to define him. In January 2003, he announced he was leaving CNN to become president of the Aspen Institute.

The Aspen Years and the Turn to Biography

The Aspen Institute is one of those Washington institutions that sounds vague but wields enormous influence. Founded in 1949, it's a nonpartisan policy studies organization that brings together business leaders, politicians, and intellectuals to discuss ideas. Think of it as a permanent salon for people who run things.

Isaacson led the Institute for fifteen years, from 2003 to 2018. But during this time, something else was happening. He was becoming America's preeminent biographer.

The transformation had actually begun earlier. In 1986, while still at Time, he co-authored "The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made" with Evan Thomas. The book told the story of the architects of American foreign policy after World War II—figures like Dean Acheson and Averell Harriman who built institutions like NATO and the Marshall Plan.

In 1992 came his biography of Henry Kissinger, the controversial Secretary of State who shaped American foreign policy during the Vietnam War and the opening to China. Then Benjamin Franklin in 2003. Einstein in 2007.

A pattern was emerging. Isaacson wasn't just writing about famous people. He was writing about people who had fundamentally changed how we think or how we live. Innovators. Disruptors. Geniuses.

The Steve Jobs Phenomenon

In 2011, everything changed. Steve Jobs died on October 5th. Nineteen days later, Isaacson's authorized biography was published.

The book broke every record for biography sales. It became an international phenomenon, translated into dozens of languages, adapted into a feature film. Jobs had personally selected Isaacson for the project, granting him over forty interviews across two years, along with unprecedented access to family, friends, and rivals.

Why had Jobs chosen Isaacson? Partly because of his track record with Franklin and Einstein—Jobs saw himself in that lineage of transformative minds. But also because Isaacson had a reputation for being fair but not hagiographic. He would tell the truth, including the unflattering parts.

And there were unflattering parts. The book depicted Jobs as brilliant but also cruel, visionary but also petty, capable of what employees called his "reality distortion field"—an ability to convince himself and others that the impossible was not only possible but inevitable.

The biography established a template that Isaacson would follow: deep access, extensive interviews, a willingness to portray complexity rather than simplicity. His subjects weren't saints. They were humans who happened to change the world.

The Innovation Thesis

In 2014, Isaacson published "The Innovators," and it revealed what he'd really been doing all along. The book traced the history of the digital revolution, from Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage in the nineteenth century to the creators of the internet and the personal computer. But it wasn't just history. It was an argument.

Isaacson's thesis: innovation is collaborative. The lone genius is a myth. Real breakthroughs happen when teams of people with different skills come together, when visionaries find engineers, when dreamers find builders. Even Steve Jobs, for all his ego, needed Steve Wozniak. Even Einstein built on the work of others.

The book made the New York Times bestseller list. Janet Maslin, reviewing it for the Times, called Isaacson "a kindred spirit to the visionaries and enthusiasts" he wrote about. It was meant as a compliment, but it also captured something true and slightly troubling: Isaacson was becoming a cheerleader for a certain kind of person.

Leonardo and the Pattern

In 2017 came Leonardo da Vinci. The book was another bestseller, another critical success. Paramount Pictures won a bidding war for the film rights, with Leonardo DiCaprio—yes, named after the artist—attached to star. The screenwriter John Logan, who wrote "The Aviator" and "Gladiator," was hired to adapt it.

By now, the Isaacson brand was clear. He wrote about geniuses who operated at the intersection of art and science, creativity and technology. Franklin was a printer who became a scientist. Einstein was a physicist who played the violin. Jobs was an engineer who cared about calligraphy. Leonardo was a painter who designed flying machines.

The pattern was flattering to Isaacson's subjects, but it was also flattering to a certain kind of reader: the Silicon Valley executive who wanted to believe that making money and making history were the same thing. Isaacson's books told them that they, too, might be geniuses—if only they could integrate the humanities and the sciences, if only they could think different.

The CRISPR Book and the Ethics Question

In 2021, Isaacson published "The Code Breaker," a biography of Jennifer Doudna, who won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on CRISPR. CRISPR stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, but you don't need to remember that. What matters is what it does: it allows scientists to edit genes with unprecedented precision. Think of it as a molecular word processor for DNA.

The book debuted at number one on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list. Publishers Weekly called it "a gripping account of a great scientific advancement and of the dedicated scientists who realized it."

But "The Code Breaker" was different from Isaacson's earlier work in one important way. Gene editing raises profound ethical questions. Should we edit human embryos? Should we eliminate genetic diseases? What about enhancing human capabilities? Where does therapy end and eugenics begin?

Isaacson engaged with these questions, but critics noted that his engagement was careful, balanced to the point of neutrality. He presented the debates without taking strong positions. For some readers, this was appropriate journalistic restraint. For others, it was a failure of nerve—a refusal to grapple seriously with the moral stakes of the technology he was celebrating.

The Musk Problem

In 2023, Isaacson published his biography of Elon Musk. It was shortlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award. It was also controversial.

Musk is a polarizing figure in ways that Jobs never was. He runs Tesla, SpaceX, and—after acquiring it in 2022—the platform formerly known as Twitter. He has millions of devoted fans who see him as humanity's best hope for becoming a multiplanetary species. He has millions of fierce critics who see him as a dangerous egomaniac spreading misinformation and undermining democracy.

Isaacson's biography tried to have it both ways. It portrayed Musk as brilliant but flawed, visionary but erratic—the same formula that had worked for Jobs. But something had changed. The stakes felt higher. The flaws felt more consequential. And critics argued that Isaacson's access came at a price: a reluctance to be truly critical of his subject.

The book's accuracy has been disputed. Some sources claimed they were misquoted or taken out of context. Others argued that Isaacson had accepted Musk's version of events too uncritically. The biographer who had made his reputation on fairness was now accused of being too fair—of treating a billionaire's self-mythology as history.

The Public Servant

Through all of this, Isaacson maintained a parallel career in public service that would have been a full-time job for anyone else.

In 2005, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco appointed him vice chairman of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, overseeing the spending on recovery from Hurricane Katrina. In 2007, President George W. Bush appointed him chairman of the U.S.-Palestinian Partnership, promoting economic and educational opportunities in Palestinian territories. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton later made him vice-chair of Partners for a New Beginning, encouraging private-sector investment in Muslim-majority countries.

He co-chaired the U.S.-Vietnamese Dialogue on Agent Orange, working to clean up the toxic legacy of American herbicide use during the Vietnam War. In 2009, President Obama appointed him chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and other U.S. international broadcasts.

The list goes on. The Defense Innovation Board. The New Orleans Tricentennial Commission. My Brother's Keeper Alliance, carrying out Obama's anti-poverty initiatives. The New Orleans City Planning Commission.

These appointments span Republican and Democratic administrations. They span foreign policy and domestic policy, media and urban planning. What they have in common is a faith in institutions and expertise, a belief that smart people working together can solve problems.

The Professor and the Medal

Since 2018, Isaacson has been a professor of history at Tulane University in New Orleans, his hometown. He teaches two courses: "The Digital Revolution" in the spring and "Law and U.S. History" in the fall. His classes feature guest speakers like Michael Lewis, the author of "Moneyball" and "The Big Short," and Perry Chen, the founder of Kickstarter.

He also co-chairs the annual New Orleans Book Festival at Tulane. He remains an advisory partner at Perella Weinberg Partners, a New York financial services firm. He sits on the boards of United Airlines Holdings, Halliburton Labs, The New Orleans Advocate/Times-Picayune, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Carnegie Institution for Science, among others.

In 2023, President Joe Biden awarded Isaacson the National Humanities Medal, the highest honor the U.S. government bestows for achievement in the humanities. The White House citation praised his ability to "bridge divides between science and the humanities and between opposing philosophies."

In November 2025, Isaacson will publish "The Greatest Sentence Ever Written," a book about the opening of the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." The book is timed for the United States Semiquincentennial—the nation's 250th anniversary in 2026.

The Isaacson Method

What has Isaacson actually accomplished? One way to measure it: he has written biographies of Franklin, Einstein, Jobs, Leonardo, Doudna, and Musk. These are arguably six of the most influential innovators in history. His subjects have collectively transformed science, technology, art, and commerce.

Another way to measure it: he has shaped how millions of people understand genius. His books don't just describe their subjects; they create a template for what genius looks like. The Isaacson genius is curious about everything. They work at the intersection of disciplines. They are difficult, demanding, sometimes cruel. They bend reality to their will.

This template is seductive. It flatters readers who see themselves in it. It flatters subjects who want to be seen this way. But it also raises questions. Does genius really look like this? Or does it look this way because Isaacson keeps finding it?

The biographer chooses his subjects. The subjects choose their biographer. Somewhere in that mutual selection, a story gets told. Isaacson's story is that world-changing innovation comes from singular minds operating at the intersection of creativity and technology, from people who are difficult because they demand excellence, who are cruel because they refuse to settle.

It's a story that serves certain interests. It suggests that we should tolerate, even celebrate, the behavior of brilliant people who make life miserable for everyone around them. It suggests that the future belongs to those who can see it first and impose it on the rest of us.

Maybe that story is true. Maybe it's the story we need to hear. Or maybe it's the story that powerful people want told about themselves—and Walter Isaacson is the most talented person alive at telling it.

The Books

For the record, here is what Isaacson has written:

"Pro and Con: Both Sides of Dozens of Unsettled and Unsettling Arguments" (1983)
"The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made" with Evan Thomas (1986)
"Kissinger: A Biography" (1992)
"Benjamin Franklin: An American Life" (2003)
"Einstein: His Life and Universe" (2007)
"American Sketches" (2009)
"Profiles in Leadership: Historians on the Elusive Quality of Greatness" (2010, as editor)
"Steve Jobs" (2011)
"The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution" (2014)
"Leonardo da Vinci" (2017)
"The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race" (2021)
"Elon Musk" (2023)
"The Greatest Sentence Ever Written" (2025)

That's thirteen books across forty-two years, plus countless articles, interviews, and lectures. The awards include the Gerald Loeb Award for "Steve Jobs," the Benjamin Franklin Medal from the Royal Society of Arts, and the Jefferson Lecture—the highest honor the federal government gives for humanities achievement.

Isaacson is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and an honorary fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. He has honorary degrees from Tufts, Cooper Union, William and Mary, Duke, and several other universities. The Isaacson School of Media and Communications at Colorado Mountain College is named after him.

The man who writes about genius has become, in his own way, an institution. Whether that institution serves truth or power—or whether there's any difference—is the question his critics keep asking and his readers keep ignoring.