Benjamin franklin and albert einstein, this is the exclusive biography of steve jobs

Anywhere but Here.
Those who’ve read it will not be surprised that Joanne was 
somewhat quirky in the way she imparted to Mona the news about her brother. She refused to say 
who he was—only that he had been poor, had gotten rich, was good-looking and famous, had long 
dark hair, and lived in California. Mona then worked at the 
Paris Review
, George Plimpton’s 
literary journal housed on the ground floor of his townhouse near Manhattan’s East River. She and 
her coworkers began a guessing game on who her brother might be. John Travolta? That was one 
of the favorite guesses. Other actors were also hot prospects. At one point someone did toss out a 
guess that “maybe it’s one of those guys who started Apple computer,” but no one could recall 
their names.
The meeting occurred in the lobby of the St. Regis Hotel. “He was totally straightforward and 
lovely, just a normal and sweet guy,” Mona recalled. They all sat and talked for a few minutes, 
then he took his sister for a long walk, just the two of them. Jobs was thrilled to find that he had a 
sibling who was so similar to him. They were both intense in their artistry, observant of their 
surroundings, and sensitive yet strong-willed. When they went to dinner together, they noticed the 
same architectural details and talked about them excitedly afterward. “My sister’s a writer!” he 
exulted to colleagues at Apple when he found out.
When Plimpton threw a party for 
Anywhere but Here
in late 1986, Jobs flew to New York to 
accompany Mona to it. They grew increasingly close, though their friendship had the complexities 
that might be expected, considering who they were and how they had come together. “Mona was 
not completely thrilled at first to have me in her life and have her mother so emotionally 
affectionate toward me,” he later said. “As we got to know each other, we became really good 
friends, and she is my family. I don’t know what I’d do without her. I can’t imagine a better sister. 

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My adopted sister, Patty, and I were never close.” Mona likewise developed a deep affection for 
him, and at times could be very protective, although she would later write an edgy novel about 
him, 
A Regular Guy
, that described his quirks with discomforting accuracy.
One of the few things they would argue about was her clothes. She dressed like a struggling 
novelist, and he would berate her for not wearing clothes that were “fetching enough.” At one 
point his comments 
so annoyed her that she wrote him a letter: “I am a young writer, and this is my life, and I’m not 
trying to be a model anyway.” He didn’t answer. But shortly after, a box arrived from the store of 
Issey Miyake, the Japanese fashion designer whose stark and technology-influenced style made 
him one of Jobs’s favorites. “He’d gone shopping for me,” she later said, “and he’d picked out 
great things, exactly my size, in flattering colors.” There was one pantsuit that he had particularly 
liked, and the shipment included three of them, all identical. “I still remember those first suits I 
sent Mona,” he said. “They were linen pants and tops in a pale grayish green that looked beautiful 
with her reddish hair.”
The Lost Father
In the meantime, Mona Simpson had been trying to track down their father, who had wandered off 
when she was five. Through Ken Auletta and Nick Pileggi, prominent Manhattan writers, she was 
introduced to a retired New York cop who had formed his own detective agency. “I paid him what 
little money I had,” Simpson recalled, but the search was unsuccessful. Then she met another 
private eye in California, who was able to find an address for Abdulfattah Jandali in Sacramento 
through a Department of Motor Vehicles search. Simpson told her brother and flew out from New 
York to see the man who was apparently their father.
Jobs had no interest in meeting him. “He didn’t treat me well,” he later explained. “I don’t hold 
anything against him—I’m happy to be alive. But what bothers me most is that he didn’t treat 
Mona well. He abandoned her.” Jobs himself had abandoned his own illegitimate daughter, Lisa, 
and now was trying to restore their relationship, but that complexity did not soften his feelings 
toward Jandali. Simpson went to Sacramento alone.
“It was very intense,” Simpson recalled. She found her father working in a small restaurant. He 
seemed happy to see her, yet oddly passive about the entire situation. They talked for a few hours, 
and he recounted that, after he left Wisconsin, he had drifted away from teaching and gotten into 
the restaurant business.
Jobs had asked Simpson not to mention him, so she didn’t. But at one point her father casually 
remarked that he and her mother had had another baby, a boy, before she had been born. “What 
happened to him?” she asked. He replied, “We’ll never see that baby again. That baby’s gone.” 
Simpson recoiled but said nothing.
An even more astonishing revelation occurred when Jandali was describing the previous 
restaurants that he had run. There had been some nice ones, he insisted, fancier than the 
Sacramento joint they were then sitting in. He told her, somewhat emotionally, that he wished she 
could have seen him when he was managing a Mediterranean restaurant north of San Jose. “That 
was a wonderful place,” he said. “All of the successful technology people used to come there.