iCon: Steve Jobs, The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business is an unauthorized biography by Jeffrey S. Young and William L. Simon about the return of Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs

Steven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...

 to Apple Inc in 1996. It was published in 2005.

The book's title is a double entendre

Double entendre

A double entendre or adianoeta is a figure of speech in which a spoken phrase is devised to be understood in either of two ways. Often the first meaning is straightforward, while the second meaning is less so: often risqué or ironic....

 with one connotation as Jobs as an icon

Cultural icon

A cultural icon can be a symbol, logo, picture, name, face, person, building or other image that is readily recognized and generally represents an object or concept with great cultural significance to a wide cultural group...

 with attributes to be admired, while carrying the negative interpretation as I-(am a)-Con, as in a con man

Confidence trick

A confidence trick is an attempt to defraud a person or group by gaining their confidence. A confidence artist is an individual working alone or in concert with others who exploits characteristics of the human psyche such as dishonesty and honesty, vanity, compassion, credulity, irresponsibility,...

, criticized for charisma used in harmful ways such as the "reality distortion field

Reality distortion field

Reality distortion field is a term coined by Bud Tribble at Apple Computer in 1981, to describe company co-founder Steve Jobs' charisma and its effects on the developers working on the Mac project. Bud Tribble claimed that the term came from Star Trek...

".

Criticism

In an article for the San Francisco Chronicle

San Francisco Chronicle

thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...

, Alan Deutschman criticises iCon, pointing out the similarity of the book's content to his own previous biography of Steve Jobs, The Second Coming of Steve Jobs

The Second Coming of Steve Jobs

The Second Coming of Steve Jobs is an unauthorized biography chronicling the life of Steve Jobs, a co-founder of Apple Inc by Vanity Fair magazine writer Alan Deutschman. It covers his period at NeXT, an unexpected success at Pixar and his comeback to Apple followed by the introduction of iMac....

.

As retribution for publishing this unauthorized biography, Jobs banned all publications from publisher John Wiley & Sons

John Wiley & Sons

John Wiley & Sons, Inc., also referred to as Wiley, is a global publishing company that specializes in academic publishing and markets its products to professionals and consumers, students and instructors in higher education, and researchers and practitioners in scientific, technical, medical, and...

 from Apple retail stores

Apple Store (retail)

The Apple Retail Store is a chain of retail stores owned and operated by Apple Inc., dealing in computers and consumer electronics. The stores sell Macintosh personal computers, software, iPods, iPads, iPhones, third-party accessories, and other consumer electronics such as Apple TV...

. In its 2010 annual earnings report, Wiley said it had "closed a deal ... to make its titles available for the iPad."