Isaacson Walter

   Walter Isaacson is a celebrated American journalist, biographer, intellectual leader, and humanist.

   The story of Walter Isaacson begins on May 20, 1952, when he was born at the Touro Infirmary in New Orleans. Much later on, he described his father, Irwin, as a "kindly Jewish distracted humanist engineer with a reference for science." His mother, Betsy, was a real estate broker for whom Walter would name his only child.

   After graduating from New Orleans' Isidore Newman School, as well as a summer at Deep Springs College for the Telluride Association Summer Program (TASP), Isaacson graduated from Harvard University in 1974 with a BA in history and literature. At Harvard, Isaacson was the president of the Signet Society, a member of the Harvard Lampoon, and a resident of Lowell House. He then attended the University of Oxford in the UK as a Rhodes Scholar at Pembroke College, where he read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE).

   Isaacson began his career in journalism at The Sunday Times of London, followed by a position with the New Orleans Times-Picayune. He joined Timemagazine in 1978, serving as the magazine’s political correspondent, national editor, and editor of new media before becoming the magazine’s 14th editor in 1996.

   In 2001 he became the CEO of CNN, overseeing its operations during 9/11 and afterwards, a job he held until 2003.

   Isaacson became the president and CEO of the Aspen Institute in 2003. He is the editor of Profiles in Leadership: Historians on the Elusive Quality of Greatness (2010, W. W. Norton).

   Isaacson is the author of American Sketches (2009), Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007), Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2003) and Kissinger: A Biography (1992). He is the co-author, with Evan Thomas, of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (1986).

   On October 24, 2011, Steve Jobs, Isaacson’s authorized biography of Apple Computer’s Jobs was published by Simon & Schuster. 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 up until shortly before his death and on conversations with friends, family members, and business rivals of the entrepreneur.

   In October 2014, Isaacson published The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution, which explores the history of the key technological innovations that are prominent in the digital revolution, most notably the parallel developments of the computer and the Internet. It became a New York Times bestseller. Writing for the New York Times, Janet Maslin described the author as “a kindred spirit to the visionaries and enthusiasts” who Isaacson wrote about.

   Isaacson is the chairman emeritus of the board of Teach for America. He is on the boards of United Airlines, Tulane University, Overseers of Harvard University, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and the Society of American Historians, of which he served as president in 2012.

   In 2012, he was selected as one of the Time 100, the magazine’s list of the most influential people in the world. Isaacson is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and was awarded its 2013 Benjamin Franklin Medal. He is also a member of the American Philosophical Society and an Honorary Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford.

   In 2014 the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Isaacson for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government’s highest honor for achievement in the humanities. The title of Isaacson's lecture was “The Intersection of the Humanities and the Sciences.”

   He was selected as the 2015 recipient of The Nichols-Chancellor's Medal at Vanderbilt University.

   Walter and Cathy, his wife of 30 years, live in an 1803 house in the Washington, D.C., neighborhood of Georgetown.