Walter 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 has written biographies of Henry Kissinger, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs.

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 1974 in history and literature. While at Harvard, Isaacson was president of the Signet Society, a member of the Harvard Lampoon and a resident of Lowell House. He then attended the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar at Pembroke College and read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE).

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), 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. One of the most famous saying Steve Jobs of Apple told to Isaacson is: "I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40bn in the bank ... to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this."". It became an 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 business rivals of the entrepreneur whose vision revolutionized computing, music, phones, animated films, and publishing.

He is the chairman of the board of Teach for America. 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 2012, he was selected as one of the Time 100, the magazine's list of the most influential people in the world.