Elon Musk: by Walter Isaacson

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The Verge critic Elizabeth Lopatto criticized the book and Isaacson, writing that on the subject of the lack of sourcing for the allegations of Starlink being shut off, that more interviews could have been held but that "Isaacson chose not to" and "rolled over" on social media when Musk contested, while also stating that Isaacson did not dig deeper and left out details to "keep Musk's myth intact. Musk’s word was good enough for him — and so, when Musk contested the characterization, Isaacson rolled over.

Crucially, though, this article says nothing about Ukrainian submarines — instead, it’s primarily about aerial vehicles. What Isaacson’s biography reveals through its personalized lens on Musk’s work with Tesla, SpaceX, OpenAI, and more is not only what Musk wants, but how and why he plans to do it. One day a group pushed him down some concrete steps and kicked him until his face was a swollen ball of flesh. He pushes employees at his companies — he now runs six, including X, the platform formerly known as Twitter — to slash costs and meet brutal deadlines because he needs to pour resources into the moonshot of colonizing space “before civilization crumbles. While writing that it is "strictly a book of reportage" and that "[Isaacson's] reporting is rigorous and dogged", the reviewer noted that the book "asks all the wrong questions".

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.

In his listed sources, we have only the text messages of one Ukrainian, who, for diplomatic purposes, may be obscuring what he knows. Remember when Musk said, “ I might pump but I don’t dump,” and then Tesla sold 75 percent of its Bitcoin?Kimbal Musk, Elon’s brother and sometimes business partner, is quoted as saying, “This is the wrong person for you. As the people closest to him will attest, he lacks empathy — something that Isaacson describes as a “gene” that’s “hard-wired. Musk has often donated in ways that will benefit him in Texas, where he has a substantial operation. Isaacson does have time for a lot of Steve Jobs comparisons, which, after a while, begin to feel like product placement for his other book.

These long-standing right-wing ties belie the notion advanced by Isaacson that the real cause of Musk’s right-wing pivot is his daughter, Jenna; I found these sections of the book difficult to read, as they essentially amount to victim blaming.

The Washington Post followed it up, publishing the excerpt where Isaacson claimed Musk had essentially shut down a military offensive on a personal whim. We use Google Analytics to see what pages are most visited, and where in the world visitors are visiting from. Musk found out from a member of his security detail — and it’s revealing to me that none of the people around Musk who knew, including Grimes, wanted to break the news. Isaacson, whose previous biographical subjects include Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs, is a patient chronicler of obsession; in the case of Musk, he can occasionally seem too patient — a hazard for any biographer who is given extraordinary access.

A painstakingly excavation of the tortured unquiet mind of the world’s richest man… Isaacson’s book is not a soaring portrait of a captain of industry, but rather an exhausting ride through the life of a man who seems incapable of happiness. Of course, there’s the time in April 2022 when he sold Tesla shares and said he had no further sales planned, followed by him selling more Tesla shares in August 2022, when he said he was done selling Tesla shares. While the stories are fascinating and guaranteed to spark a mountain of coverage, founders and entrepreneurs will also unearth valuable lessons. It is accepted by you that Daunt Books has no control over additional charges in relation to customs clearance.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. Maybe so, but there’s actual science fact: brain-machine interfaces had been implanted in humans as early as 2006, something Isaacson doesn’t mention. There is even a “genius” boxed set of his biographies that includes Benjamin Franklin, Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, and — somewhat incongruously — Steve Jobs. Musk's humour – he took the 'w' out of the Twitter sign in San Francisco because 'tit' is so inherently funny – has 'many levels'.