Elon Musk

Title: Elon Musk

Author: Walter Isaacson

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Genre: Biography, Nonfiction, 

Source: Front Gate Media

My Review:

I knew very little about Elon Musk before reading Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson. I knew he had worked with Tesla and took over Twitter, and I can't say I knew much more than that.

He (Musk) developed a siege mentality that included an attraction, sometimes a craving, for storm and drama, both at work and in the romantic relationships he struggled and failed to maintain.

Elon Musk had a horrific childhood. He grew up in South Africa with a father who was emotionally distant, and physically and mentally abusive. His mother didn't go against his father. They eventually divorced but that didn't make anything better. Despite his childhood, he was able to stay close to his siblings, Kimbal and Tosca.

Musk was a brilliant child, but his teachers did not see him that way. He zoned out all the time, but it sounds like he was bored and unchallenged. He has to be smart for all that he has accomplished. 

One thing I appreciated in the book was the use of pictures. They are scattered throughout the book, in the appropriate sections. It was interesting to see Musk as a child, at his wedding, and many other pivotal moments in his life.

The more I learned about Musk as I read the book, the more it surprised me that he let Walter Isaacson shadow him for two years to gather the information in this book! Isaacson spoke with different members of Musk's family, his ex-wives, friends, co-workers, and so many others. I was also surprised by how many different things Musk has had his hands in over the years (PayPal, Tesla, Twitter (now X), Space X, The Boring Company, Neuralink, and more). I also found it interesting how fascinated Musk is with X, wanting everything he does to have one in it.

This book is brutally honest. Musk is not portrayed as Mr. Nice Guy, he is shown as mean, egotistical, hard, and driven. He refuses to take no for an answer and rarely apologizes. He is not easy to get along with and even those closest to him don't have a lot of nice things to say.

I would recommend this book to those who are fascinated by Elon Musk and want a detailed account (with pictures) of his life.

Trigger warnings: cursing, mentions of abuse, description of a dog attack

Thank you to Front Gate Media for the opportunity to read this book. I was not required to provide a positive review. All thoughts and opinions are entirely my own.

Purchase link: https://bit.ly/PartnerEM -there is an exclusive 40% off discount on the hardcover from March 10- April 15 by using this link.

Synopsis (Goodreads): 

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.

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 are the demons that drive Musk also what it takes to drive innovation and progress?