Walter Isaacson's biography on the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs is an unstinting view of what many claim to be the visionary of our age. "Steve Jobs" is a rare view of a deeply private man who inspired other and drove Apple to change the world.

The book is the only authorized biography of Jobs and serves as a chronicle of the inner workings of Apple Inc. The bio showcases different facets of Jobs, the innovator and rebel, the tyrant who picked on his employees if they weren't creative enough and Jobs' complex relationship with his family and friends.

The bio is a must read for Apple fans who want the inside scoop on the development of the iPod, iPhone and the Macintosh personal computer. Following the iPad announcement in 2010, Jobs was depressed at the feedback he got from the new Apple device. He told Isaacson:

"It was easy to explain what the iPod was - a thousand songs in your pocket - which allowed us to move quickly to the iconic silhouette ads. But it was hard to explain what an iPad was. We didn't want to show it as a computer, and yet we didn't want to make it so soft that it looked like a cute TV. The first set of ads showed we didn't know what we were doing. They had a cashmere and Hush Puppies feel to them."

Isaacson's biography also touched on Apple and Microsoft's rivalry and what Jobs really thought about Microsoft's former CEO Bill Gates.

"It's easy to throw stones at Microsoft," Jobs said. "They're clearly fallen from their dominance. They've become mostly irrelevant. And yet I appreciate what they did and how hard it was. They were very good at the business side of things. They were never as ambitious product-wise as they should have been."

Jobs described Bill Gates as a "business person" but not an innovator. "He ended up the wealthiest guy around, and if that was his goal, then he achieved it. But it's never been my goal, and I wonder, in the end, if it was his goal."

However Jobs reserved most of his anger at Google and what Jobs perceived as Google's theft of Apple's iPhone.

"I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong," Jobs told Isaacson. "I'm going to destroy Android because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go to thermonuclear war on this. They are scared to death because they know they are guilty."

With Isaacson's biography, Steve Jobs influence and history will continue to inspire readers eager to know the enigmatic genius behind some of the most innovative tech products the world has ever seen. Isaacson sums it up best in the final pages of the book.

"Polite and velvety leaders, who take care to avoid bruising others, are generally not as effective at forcing change," Isaacson writes. "Dozens of the colleagues whom Jobs most abused ended their litany of horror stories by saying that he got them to do things they never dreamed possible."

"Steve Jobs," by Walter Isaacson, hit bookstores Monday. Pre-orders have topped best-seller lists since Jobs died Oct. 5, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.

The book is the best-selling book on Amazon.com and is also listed as the top-selling electronic book on the company's Kindle eBook store, according to an official announcement by the online retailer.

The publisher Simon & Schuster set the list price at $35.

According to The New York Post, online sites have been offering digital copies of the book for $16.99 and the hardcover for $17.88.