To Pixar and Beyond
"After Steve Jobs was unceremoniously dismissed from Apple in the early 1990's, while building his failed competitor NeXT, he made a side bet to develop a little-known, barely profitable video graphics company called Pixar. One day, out of the blue, Jobs called Lawrence Levy, a Harvard-trained attorney, in the hope that Jobs could somehow persuade Levy to join forces with him in his quest to energize Pixar. Somehow, despite Pixar's very modest beginnings, Levy, Jobs, and studio chief Ed Catmull, were able to shape it into the world's most creative motion picture company. This is Levy's account of those early beginnings at Pixar, of his friendship with Jobs, and how they were able to join forces to transform Pixar into one of Hollywood's greatest success stories"
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2016–2022years
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- Also read "To Pixar and Beyond" by Lawrence Levy, who Steve Jobs hired to save the company. It tells the Pixar story from the CFO perspective.
- Fiction: Berserk. Not a book, but a long-running manga that began in 1989 by then-22-year-old Kentaro Miura, and which was ongoing until his tragic death this year in May. It is a fantasy; some parts are grim, some immensely tragic, but at its core it is human and uplifting, and we see moments of incredible beauty and deep emotion. On top of this, the art is absolutely gorgeous and is in a class of its own. If you're interested in Berserk, I recommend reading the original manga, but the 1997 anime is excellent as well.
Nonfiction: To Pixar And Beyond. The former CFO of Pixar, Lawrence Levy, tells the story of Pixar's IPO and the making of Toy Story. Very interesting reading for anyone interesting in Steve Jobs, Pixar, or the business of movies and tech.
- Back in 2017 a "Humble Bundle" package included the Lawrence Levy book "To Pixar and Beyond: My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History"[0]. I got the book there and really enjoyed it.
Levy was brought in, by Jobs, as CFO of Pixar prior to the IPO and the book is concerend with more of the business side of Pixar pivoting from hardware company to studio.
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28114529-to-pixar-and-be...
- I like books which are sort of lessons within a biography format. Points pulled from real experience. For me, this adds context and makes a book readable. If you don't learn anything, then at least you might get to read a good story.
The hard thing about hard things, by Ben Horowitz
The Score Takes Care of Itself, Bill Walsh (49ers Coach)
Creativity, Inc, Ed Catmull (Ran Pixar)
To Pixar and Beyond, Lawrence Levy (CFO of Pixar with interesting different POV than Ed Catmull)
Otherwise for any dumpster fire of a subject I want a book on, I'll try to trace the "lineage" to see where the starting points were. The trash today won't be a thing 50 years from now. So, maybe look at books from 50 years ago or more.
- - The Prince (get's a bad press, thought provoking)
- Apex [Nexus 3] (prose is meh, inevitable life goes this way)
- Factfulness (Awesome, most important book I read this year)
- Prisoners of Geography (why nations act the way they do)
- Crux [Nexus 2] (prose is meh, inevitable life goes this way)
- Debt: the first 5000 years (slog to get through but interesting)
- Nexus [Nexus 1] (prose is meh, inevitable life goes this way)
- Digitocracy (super short story, super powerful message)
- Artemis (Not as good as the martian)
- Before Mars (Starts out great, fizzles out)
- Down and Out in Magic Kingdom (How reputation based social currency might pan out)
- Blood Sweat and Pixels (How games are really made)
- Masters of Doom (Awesome story of how the game was made and what it led to)
- Foundation [Foundation 1] (Prescient with where the world is, what might happen in reality)
- Quiet: the Power of Introverts in a World that can't... (Ok, not great, read it on blinkist)
- Ender's Game (Under rated, most fun I had reading this year, I know...)
- Neuromancer (classic, must read)
- Pre-suation (interesting and worth reading if starting a consumer facing business)
- The Three-Body Problem (Found it tedious, honestly. Interesting though)
- Radical Candour (A lot of common sense advice we take for granted and could do better with)
- Seveneves (Longggggg, but really worth it. Shame about the ending)
- The Virgin Banker (Really good read, how a bank came into being)
- Why information grows (Great read, could of been half the length, would recommend)
- Babylon Revisited (Meh)
- Money: the Unauthorised Biography (Simplistic history of money before and after coin. Good)
- Hellbent (Enjoyed it, good for a holiday read)
- Snow Crash (Classic, Awesome, read it)
- The little prince (must read)
- To Pixar and Beyond (A different viewpoint on Jobs)
- > a really good "other side of the coin" is by Lawrence Levy who Jobs brought in as "the money guy" to find a way to make Pixar profitable as they tried to land Toy Story
link to book - https://www.amazon.com/To-Pixar-and-Beyond-Lawrence-Levy-aud...
