Walter Isaacson, born in 1952, is an American journalist who has become something like the default biographer of the modern age. His subjects form a remarkable roll call – Henry Kissinger, Benjamin Franklin, Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, Jennifer Doudna and Elon Musk – and his own CV is scarcely less imposing. A Harvard graduate and a Rhodes scholar at Pembroke College, Oxford, he has been editor of Time, chair and chief executive of CNN, and president and chief executive of the Aspen Institute, the Washington policy organisation.
He now teaches at Tulane University and has worked since 2018 as an interviewer on the news programme Amanpour and Company. Alongside the famous lives, his books include The Wise Men, written with Evan Thomas, and The Code Breaker, on the gene-editing pioneer Jennifer Doudna. The Innovators (2014), his group portrait of the hackers, geniuses and geeks who created the digital revolution, sits at the centre of that shelf.
17 hours and 28 minutes
