Elon Musk

By: Walter Isaacson

Narrated by: Jeremy Bobb, Walter Isaacson

Length: 20 hrs and 39 mins

Publisher's summary

#1 New York Times bestseller

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

©2023 Walter Isaacson (P)2023 Simon & Schuster Audio

I loved it

Contains a very clear picture of who Elon Musk is, and how he got there. It doesn’t sugar coat it and tells all sides of the various stories. The reader is excellent. I believe that Musk may end up being one of the most important people the world has ever seen, but he is flawed like most great men that allow people to see behind the curtain, it’s an excellent listen I would highly recommend

Worth reading

We’ll written with deep insights into arguably the most interesting man of our time. Only Musk would allow a biographer this degree of access and freedom to draw such a raw and real biographical portrait

Glad to be the first review

It’s Elon, what else needs to be said?



Review of Walter:

First, Walter has no idea what he’s talking about with the technical stuff, this isn’t a huge deal, just annoying when it comes up.

Much of the info is also not new/more detailed if you’ve seen many interviews on YouTube, just more organized. But I guess that’s the value of the book, making already available information more accessible to those that weren’t interested in keeping up with Musk stuff. Still I wonder, where is the 2 years worth of insights? Book is too short for a man like Elon imo.

Near the end of the book, Isaacson clings hard to this Demon Mode description of Musk and selectively portrays him as such with examples. Consequently, there’s way too many pages on twitter (1/5 of the book is twitter, while spanning less than a year in musk’s life. Perhaps Isaacson likes drama more than Elon). Just because twitter had more “demon mode” moments. First hand information isn’t always better than secondhand. Just because you witnessed twitter doesn’t mean it’s important enough to replace early spaceX and Tesla as 20% of the whole book.

Still, the value of this book is high.


Nitpicks:

(AI argument is not clear, to those unfamiliar, it will sound like doomsday bs in the book. Also consciousness is not a necessary condition for super intelligence, so the “descendent” argument by Page is very weak.)


(Early SpaceX was rushed, should have mentioned that sea salt corrosion and the pressurization incident were anticipated and prepared for, these mistakes were portrayed as much more idiotic than in actuality.)

Another great life story!

No one tells the life story of some of the most amazing people in the world like Walter Isaacson! The story made me laugh at some of the events and others made me feel inspired. A great story about the truly great human being that is Elon Musk. A must listen!

Remarkable!

Fantastic insight into the life and mind of one of the world’s most important, and influential people. Isaacson effectively connect the dots, and gives context to all the diverse, fragmented, and poler descriptions from which the average person needs to draw upon, to try and understand this remarkable and extraordinary— driven and sometimes tormented human being.

Great story, less political bias

The book was well researched and very interesting. Author is clearly on the left and can’t help but interweave his politics into the story and show sustain for musk thinking differently

Incredible!

Riveting look into a man I completely misunderstood until this book.
The author did an excellent job of weaving his story just as if we are there. Thank you

Great

Tesla and space x was really interesting about their development. He’s an interesting study as a human.

Ride or Die

I’m on the Musk Starship! He is a visionary. I’m happy to have learned about his life. I am excited to hear more in the future!

Inspiring

Inspiring, motivational

Yet leaves the reader in a controversial dilemma to answer the “how to be a leader” question.