Alum Doug Menuez's Rare Photos Shed Light on Steve Jobs, A Young Silicon Valley

SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS -- Doug Menuez, a photographer who has trekked to the North Pole and crossed the Sahara, is the man Jobs chose to document a make-or-break moment, when he was trying to launch his second company, NeXT, after being ousted from his first, Apple Computer. Menuez immersed himself in every aspect of life at NeXT in the late 1980s, staying up until 3am with the engineers and standing witness in the abandoned warehouse where former presidential candidate Ross Perot agreed to toss the computer company a $20-million lifeline. He even felt the sting of Jobs’ famous stubbornness. Atria Books just published Menuez’s “Fearless Genius: The Digital Revolution in Silicon Valley 1985 – 2000,” a book that offers up youthful portraits of men who are now regarded almost as prophets in the valley, from Jobs to Microsoft’s Bill Gates to Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. Menuez attended San Francisco Art Institute and San Francisco State University.