It's got to be one of the most leaked books ever, but here's a spoiler I didn't expect.
The first authorised biography of Steve Jobs claims the then US President, Bill Clinton, asked his advice over handling the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal in a late-night phone call in 1998. That's according to the Sunday Telegraph:
"I don't know if you did it,” Mr Jobs told the then US president, “but if so, you've got to tell the country.”It is unclear whether the advice to go public was welcome. For there was a long silence on the other end of the phone after he gave his response, according to Mr Jobs’s biographer Walter Isaacson.Mr Clinton was famous for placing calls from the Oval Office as he worked late, but it is raising eyebrows that he sought the counsel of the Silicon Valley innovator on such a sensitive political and personal controversy.
The biography, titled "Steve Jobs", is published on Monday, October 24.Mr Jobs later sought a striking favour of his own from Mr Clinton, according to Mr Isaacson. When working on his iconic “Think Different” ad campaign, he asked the president to put a call into Tom Hanks to ask him to narrate the commercial. Mr Clinton declined.Despite the apparently awkward advice and spurned request, the relationship between the two men remained strong. Indeed, in an interview after Mr Jobs’s death with Time magazine, the former president recalled his gratitude at a gesture from the Apple chief when Chelsea Clinton was studying at Stanford university, in the heart of Silicon Valley.“He got in touch with me, and said, 'It's hard to travel to see your child when you're President. I've got a place out in the country. You and Hillary can stay there and bring Chelsea and her friends there anytime you want to,'" Clinton recalled. "He gave me a priceless gift: the opportunity to see my child while I was still a very public figure, so I'm highly biased in his favour. Plus, even I can work an iPad."
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