Insight into an interesting person. Isaacson provided an amazing amount of insight. His study of influential people and his ability to both draw them out and make sense of what they say makes a great book. ( )

Excellent book about a really really interesting man. Just incredible the intensity and depth of his work. Reminds me of some people I have had the privilege of working with. Also makes me feel like I have wasted a lot of my time! A loooong book; 20 hours on audible. Only downside is that the reader is a little pedantic. ( )

[4.25] My inner-voice taunted me as I proceeded to check out this bulky biography. “Do you really want to invest the time to read more than 600 pages about Elon Musk?” Candidly, I wasn’t sure. As many of my reviews have noted, any tome that exceeds 400 pages has to be exceptional to keep my attention. Isaacson passed the test with flying colors. Certainly, my lifelong interest in all-things-business was undoubtedly a factor. I was fascinated by Isaacson’s deep-dives into the inner workings of Tesla, Space X, Neuralink and the company that was once known as Twitter. A value added feature was learning stuff about a Musk-inspired company I had never even heard of before: The Boring Company. This meticulously researched biography is anything but boring. Musk’s quirky and multidimensional persona kept this saga moving at an impressive clip. My only minor criticism is that there were numerous passages that spurred me to wonder if the biographer may have become a bit too “chummy” with his subject. As a lifelong journalist, I’ve always believed in the importance of some level of detachment between the journalist and the source. I can understand why some readers have wondered aloud whether Isaacson’s two-year encounter with Musk may have steered him off the path of impartiality. This is certainly not to imply that the biographer gave short shrift to any of Musk’s glaring flaws. But there are several sections that feel a bit like the biographer became a friend or sympathetic therapist. ( )

The author Walter Isaacson told the Wall Street Journal that Musk vowed to surprise him with the degree of transparency he would be allowed as he shadowed his subject for two years (see Acknowledgements at the back.) He never had the impression that Musk was sugar-coating his behaviour for a witness. This seems like as fair a path to objectivity, but it is worth bearing in mind as you read that almost every one of the author's previous subjects provided the wonderful convenience of being deceased.

This was my first time reading the biography of a fellow Gen-Xer. Elon Musk distinguished himself early with his ambition and audacity. Imagine securing a student summer job by cold-calling a high level bank executive and requesting a luncheon. He was an early adapter of the internet and "caught the wave", living on a shoestring to score some early wins with his talents that made him a millionaire before he was thirty. Perhaps the most remarkable moment in this entire book is that he didn't retire and end his story there. His ambition wouldn't let him: to server out humanity-sized goals, to realize dreams of the future in his lifetime, and to never back down in the face of extraordinary risk. He appears to be a rare instance of a man whose abilities are a match for his vision.

Isaacson does not shy away from portraying the downside of Musk's character. Musk is a far cry from a people person, something rooted in his psyche from a rough and tumble childhood but also a factor of his undiagnosed Aspergers. He has an incredible ability to focus, and the envious characteristic of not prioritizing making dollars ahead of achieving his goals, backed by an extreme confidence in his ability to find required money for his ventures one way or another when need be thanks to a good eye for monetization opportunities. By 2009, when Space X and Tesla got onto firmer ground, he was well established as someone you did not want to bet against in the long term. History values a man's record ahead of how nice he was, and will treat Elon Musk kinder than we do. As Bill Gates is quoted saying, you can dislike the man but you can't ignore his impact.

The biography of a man who takes on risk will always offer the greatest stories, and there are a few of those here such as when Elon offers to demonstrate what his car can do when he floors it, or his rules for building rockets that left NASA in his dust. These were the best parts in a very long series of short chapters that didn't enamour me with their structuring. While it made the reading easier, sometimes this approach can't bring the whole picture together of a moment in time or even stay completely chronological. I'm sorry more time wasn't spent exploring Musk's formative years. Other than family there's very little perspective from adults who knew him as a child or struggling student; could none of them be found? There were points where I wanted to stop the narrative and ask questions. Why did social life suddenly begin to matter to Musk at the time when he was selecting a university? When did he come up with the concept for Ad Astra, the private school he founded for family and friends, and how does it differ from the public system? It doesn't even rate an index entry (see Chapter 56, page 344.)

An unannounced shift in style and tone occurs about halfway through the book, after which Isaacson himself is present in Musk's story. This latter half is much slower, devoted to just the past three years. The impression given by this strange time dilation is of a life that has recently snowballed. One of the factors excusing it is the huge broadening of Musk's interests after Space X and Tesla were on their feet: self-driving cars, artificial intelligence, neural networks, neural links, solar energy, underground tunnellling, Starlink, Starship, humanoid robots, etc. The other is the more public face that Musk began to present, by which most of us feel we know him: the public appearances, the statements and tweets he's made since we began paying closer attention.

Twitter dominates the book's last quarter. The intent here is probably (and again, it's not distinguished or spelled out) to offer it up as a case study of how Musk operates by delving into the minutiae, but it's unfortunate that this has to be the example Isaacson witnessed and can best report on. Twitter is the least interesting venture that Musk has involved himself in, being outside of the science and innovation sphere.

If this biography has a thesis, it's the question as to whether Musk's challenging personae is endemic to great innovators. I find parallels with the biography of George Lucas. Lucas, too, had vision that others thought was crazy but pushed ahead, staking his personal fortune on realizing it. He too had trouble with authority overruling him, was ready to be innovative and pushed his employees with what seemed like wild, unreasonable demands and goals. But by most if not all accounts Lucas is a quiet and easy-going character. Perhaps it speaks to a difference between science and the arts. Or maybe it's just that Isaacson is attracted to studying a rougher kind of character. Musk and Jobs, among many other things, also have their biographer in common. Isaacson also struggles at times with describing technology that he is far from strongly versed in. I would say he fared better in wrestling with Eintein's theory of relativity than he does with computer science.

Musk presents himself, though never in so many words, as the hero working for the good of the world. I can side with him insofar as I'm more concerned by Google's Larry Page nihilism than Musk's 'demon mode'. In one significant respect, Musk does resemble a cartoon villain: you cannot be one of his sidekicks and feel comfortable about it. At least a reader of this biography is spared the bother of remembering most of their names. This cannot be the definitive biography on Elon Musk to settle the good/evil question. We will have to wait until the subject himself is history for a more complete picture that can place the correct emphasis where it belongs, conveying an even tone and approach from cover to cover. But for those of us who, like Musk, want to see as much of the envisioned future happen in our own lifetimes as possible, depending on your age this may be the best one about Musk you're going to read.

(PS - there has already been one retraction. Musk did NOT turn off wi-fi for the Ukrainians in Crimea when their mission was already underway. It was already off for that area, and he refused to activate it for their mission. This will be corrected in later editions.) ( )

A broad sweep of the varied businesses and relationships of Elon Musk told in chronological order, this book informed for the most part dispassionately, leaving the reader to reach his own conclusions about the goodness or badness of it all. Even so, there is a hint of Isaacson's view, not by explicit analysis, but by other means such as by juxtaposition, for ex talking about Musk and Apple's Tim Cook, and remarking about a quality Cook has (moral compass), which to the reader may imply something about Musk. Then there is a part (to me the most important part) about X (not his son, but the website formerly known as Twitter) where Isaacson treats the matter of Elon Musk on blockchain and a payments/data licensing/social media/identity verification platform, and whether that will be distinct from X/Twitter or be a transformed X/Twitter. Here, regarding Musk's motives for X/Twitter, Isaacson offers some his own belief and thought, yet in a safely ambiguous way, suggesting it's a Musk return to the playground (introduced in the Prologue), but with Musk now owning it -- what does that mean? Is Musk now the playground bully bad guy? Or is Musk now the playground cop, the good guy keeping things safe from bullies? So this is the presentation - a report style book about someone who will affect maybe everyone, though they may not yet realize it. There were specifics that were not discussed at all (such as the matter of competition or collaboration with the government in the new payments/identity services area, given the USPS is moving to that space), but for the most part I was impressed with how the book covered so much without it feeling overwhelming. Relationships, personality (pathology?), banking, medicine, sustainability, space, Ukraine war drones, it's all in there with plenty of photos throughout and an index. The book did not inspire, entertain, or offer hope to me; instead, it informed, and it made me nauseous, and - to me - it warned. I'm thankful for Isaacson making it easy and quick to read about this unsettling someone so significant to the world. ( )