Elon Musk
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4.5 • 39 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
From the author of Steve Jobs and other bestselling biographies, this is the astonishingly intimate story of the most fascinating and controversial innovator of our era—a rule-breaking visionary who helped to lead the world into the era of electric vehicles, private space exploration, and artificial intelligence. Oh, and took over Twitter.
Australian Financial Review Top 20 Read for 2023
When Elon Musk was a kid in South Africa, he was regularly beaten by bullies. One day a group pushed him down some concrete steps and kicked him until his face was a swollen ball of flesh. He was in the hospital for a week. But the physical scars were minor compared to the emotional ones inflicted by his father, an engineer, rogue, and charismatic fantasist.
His father’s impact on his psyche would linger. He developed into a tough yet vulnerable man-child, prone to abrupt Jekyll-and-Hyde mood swings, with an exceedingly high tolerance for risk, a craving for drama, an epic sense of mission, and a maniacal intensity that was callous and at times destructive.
At the beginning of 2022—after a year marked by SpaceX launching thirty-one rockets into orbit, Tesla selling a million cars, and him becoming the richest man on earth—Musk spoke ruefully about his compulsion to stir up dramas. “I need to shift my mindset away from being in crisis mode, which it has been for about fourteen years now, or arguably most of my life,” he said.
It was a wistful comment, not a New Year’s resolution. Even as he said it, he was secretly buying up shares of Twitter, the world’s ultimate playground. Over the years, whenever he was in a dark place, his mind went back to being bullied on the playground. Now he had the chance to own the playground.
For two years, Isaacson shadowed Musk, attended his meetings, walked his factories with him, and spent hours interviewing him, his family, friends, coworkers, and adversaries. The result is the revealing inside story, filled with amazing tales of triumphs and turmoil, that addresses the question: are the demons that drive Musk also what it takes to drive innovation and progress?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Reckless ambition, ruthless drive, and psychic demons swaddle the soul of a wounded child in this sweeping biography of the celebrated industrialist. Biographer Isaacson (Steve Jobs) paints Musk as a tech visionary who wants to colonize Mars with his rocket company SpaceX, decarbonize transportation with his Tesla electric cars, and guarantee freedom of speech on the internet (as long as said speech doesn't personally offend him) by buying Twitter. He portrays Musk as an innovator who embraced risk-taking both for better (he replaced a standard, $3-million cooling system on his rockets with a commercial home air-conditioning system costing $6,000) and worse (his decision to leave out a part designed to keep fuel from sloshing caused a rocket to explode in mid-flight). Musk is a callous, volatile boss, raging at underlings and forcing them to work round-the-clock. ("You have ninety days to do it. If you can't make that work, your resignation is accepted" went a typical pep talk.) And he's a monumental head case—as a boy, a loner abused by his father and beaten bloody by bullies; as a man, a manic-depressive drawn to chaos in business, romance, and any number of ill-considered Tweets. Isaacson shadowed Musk for two years and conjures a richly detailed, evocative portrait that nails his impulsive personality. The result is an illuminating study that demonstrates why Musk is the most captivating of today's plutocrats.
Customer Reviews
The big biltong
4.5 stars
The author is a celebrated American biographer. who is professor of history at Tulane, and was previously CEO of the Aspen Institute, chair of CNN, and editor of Time magazine. His biographical subjects include da Vinci, Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Kissinger, and Steve Jobs. His last book ‘The Code Breaker’ (2022) about Jennifer Doudna and the development of gene editing was excellent.
In completing his latest highly anticipated effort, Mr I trailed the world’s richest man (if he isn’t right now, he will be again soon) around with full access for two years and interviewed most significant others (Amber Heard is a notable exception) in the life of Elon thus far.
Bloomberg journalist Ashlee Vance’s estimable 2015 effort only covered up to 2014: ancient history in Muskworld. Mr Isaacson recaps the great man’s decidedly unusual upbringing in South Africa, as well as the move to Canada then the US, but supplies more personal details (for better or worse). Then tells us what he’s been up to lately. Answer: plenty.
I knew the highlights reel of Musk’s business achievements from newspaper and magazine articles, but not in such detail. His work ethic, disordered personality, refusal to let anything but the laws of physics stand in the way of his drive to change the world make Steve Jobs seem like a pussycat by comparison. Unbridled egomaniac, sure, but the big E gets things done. It’ll be interesting to see if everything comes crashing down around him one day. I wouldn’t count on it based on his track record so far. Neither does Mr Isaacson, it seems.