Published: 2023
Series: N/A
Author: Walter Isaacson
Illustrator: N/A
Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Business, Audiobook, Technology, History, Memoir, Science, Leadership
Audience (Grade Levels): High School, Adults (PreK-12th Grade Library / Fit for Grades 11-12)
Number of Stars: ⭐⭐⭐ (3/5 stars)
Goodreads Link: Elon Musk
Triggers: Mention of physical bullying/violence, domestic/parental emotional abuse, strong language
Review By: Evan Waugh
Publisher’s Summary:
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?
Review:
I was drawn to Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk strictly out of a sense of curiosity about the larger-than-life figure and his story. I was curious to see how Walter Isaacson would divulge Musk’s story, including the bits that have been playing out in the public view for the past few years, as well as sprinkle in any information that the public does not know about Musk. While Musk keeps what seems to be a cult-like following, he is not without his fair share of skeptics and critics, and although I can say I have a better understanding of Musk following my reading of this book, I can still say that I belong to the latter camp.
Musk’s story – while told very well through Isaacson’s writing, who I was familiar with as the author of high-profile biographies of luminaries like Steve Jobs and Einstein – remains one of privilege, despite the mystique that has sprung up around him that portrays him as a self-made businessman. While it is true that Musk had very little support from his parents – including his father, who squandered all of his business opportunities – Musk ultimately road on the coattails of other people’s creations, using his business savvy and obsessive relationship with work to catapult such companies as PayPal and Tesla into the public eye, before aggressively taking said businesses over. From there, he pioneered such companies as StarLink, SpaceX, and Neuralink, all of which are so far removed from my own reality, and surely the realities of every other person living in the middle class, that I was unfazed by their stories. To say that Musk’s products – self-driving cars, rockets, neural implants – are intended for a specific demographic of privileged people is an understatement. This factor, combined with the very technical descriptions of Musk’s work provided by Isaacson, made most of my reading of this book an absolute slog.
There were times where I rolled my eyes at Musk’s outright arrogance and narcissism before having to take a break from the book. Elon Musk, while certainly the main character, is not the hero of this book. Despite these glaring personal flaws of the subject, Isaacson balances the narrative by interviewing adversaries alongside allies, presenting an intricate look at the cost of relentless ambition. For educators and high school librarians looking for an exhaustive, unvarnished deep dive into modern tech imperialism and corporate maneuvers, this text provides significant material, even if the dense engineering segments slow the overarching narrative pace down.
Classroom & Curricular Connections:
- Social Studies / Modern History & Economics: This text acts as a contemporary case study for high school economics, business management, and modern history classes. It offers an explicit look at private enterprise taking over sectors traditionally managed by global governments, such as aerospace engineering and global communications infrastructure.
- Social-Emotional Learning (SEL): The narrative provides an insightful opportunity to analyze the long-term psychological impacts of childhood trauma, parental abuse, and severe bullying. Students can evaluate how Musk’s early emotional scars influenced his high tolerance for risk and destructive Jekyll-and-Hyde workplace tendencies.
- Extension Activity / Library Application: This title is best suited as an independent reading option for advanced high school students (grades 11-12) or as a resource for non-fiction book clubs exploring modern industrial titans. An excellent library extension activity would be a “Media Literacy and Biography Analysis” panel, where students select chapters of the book and cross-reference Isaacson’s narrative with public press releases and tweets from the same timeframe, evaluating how public personas are cultivated versus documented behind closed doors.
- Diversity & Representation: While the book primarily profiles a white billionaire navigating spaces of extreme corporate privilege, it does support inclusion and global perspective through its detailed coverage of Musk’s upbringing in South Africa. It highlights the socio-political realities of his childhood and introduces a diverse global array of engineers, international workers, and business adversaries, showing the intercultural dynamics that fuel multinational tech conglomerates.
Readalikes:
- Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
- Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX by Eric Berger
- The Innovators by Walter Isaacson
