‘Elon Musk’ by Walter Isaacson, reviewed

If he survives that, ship him to Silicon Valley throughout the dot-com increase. Give him a relentless work ethic, an habit to threat and an ethical compass that places his personal pursuits at its magnetic north pole. Add a eager eye for sensible engineering minds he can mine for concepts and push to realize the seemingly unimaginable, whereas he hogs the earnings and credit score. After which hope that he will get very fortunate at pivotal moments alongside the way in which, in order that his compulsive risk-taking doesn’t blow up in his face, even when his rockets do.

The traits that conspired to make Musk the world’s richest man had been all in proof when Isaacson determined in 2021 to make him the topic of his subsequent biography. “Elon Musk,” being printed on Tuesday, will need to have appeared a pure extension of Isaacson’s “nice man” canon, which incorporates biographies of Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin and Steve Jobs. (Isaacson’s topics are virtually, although not fairly, all males.)

However Einstein, Franklin and Jobs had been all useless by the point Isaacson’s biographies hit bookstores (albeit by simply weeks in Jobs’s case), whereas Musk — CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and proprietor of X (previously Twitter) — stays very alive. Previously two years, Musk’s public picture has morphed from that of the hard-charging high-tech visionary who impressed Robert Downey Jr.’s portrayal of Tony Stark in “Iron Man” into one thing extra disturbing and polarizing.

How do you’re taking the complete measure of an more and more troubled determine whose life’s work and legacy nonetheless dangle within the steadiness? At stake is not only Musk’s place in historical past, but in addition his place within the current and future. If Isaacson fails to pin that down in a satisfying manner, it is perhaps as a result of Musk is such a fast-moving goal, and Isaacson prioritized revealing anecdotes and behind-the-scenes reportage over a complicated vital lens.

Luckily, the juicy particulars are plentiful, particularly within the e book’s closing third, which covers the 2 particularly unstable years Isaacson spent shadowing Musk. (There are wild capers and private dramas worthy of a cleaning soap opera all through, however many of the ones you’ll encounter earlier within the e book have been effectively documented prior to now, together with in Ashlee Vance’s thorough 2015 Musk biography.)

New particulars embody that Musk single-handedly scuttled a Ukrainian sneak assault on a Russian naval fleet in Crimea (extra on that under). We be taught that Musk’s girlfriend Grimes was in an Austin hospital visiting a surrogate pregnant with their then-secret second little one in 2021 on the similar time Musk’s worker Shivon Zilis was in the identical hospital pregnant with then-secret twins fathered by Musk by way of IVF, unbeknownst to Grimes. (“Maybe it’s no shock,” Isaacson deadpans, “that Musk determined to fly west that Thanksgiving weekend to take care of the easier problems with rocket engineering.”) And we uncover that Musk and Grimes have a 3rd, beforehand unreported little one, named Techno Mechanicus Musk, bringing Musk’s tally of identified offspring to 11.

This being an Isaacson biography, although, it’s clear he intends for “Elon Musk” to be greater than a bunch of attention-grabbing tales a few controversial man. He frames it as a personality research, a quest to know and maybe reconcile the contradictions at Musk’s core. However the central query he units out to reply within the e book’s prologue feels a bit too simple. It’s the identical one which lay on the coronary heart of “Steve Jobs”: Are Musk’s private demons and flaws additionally what make his spectacular achievements attainable? Seven pages in, there are not any prizes for guessing what Isaacson’s reply might be. Although the vacation spot lacks suspense, the journey is entertaining sufficient, significantly for individuals who haven’t intently adopted Musk’s excessive jinks. And regardless of the e book’s size, it zips alongside because of Isaacson’s economical prose and brief chapters.

Musk, who at age 5 traipsed solo throughout Pretoria to succeed in a cousin’s celebration after his dad and mom left him house as a punishment, has all the time had slightly loopy in him. To assist clarify it, Isaacson introduces us early on to Elon’s brutal, “Jekyll-and-Hyde” father, Errol Musk. He’s a person Elon largely despises, but in addition, in his worst moments, resembles. When Musk’s first spouse, Justine, reached her wit’s finish with him, she would warn: “You’re turning into your father.”

Elon’s childhood in South Africa reads just like the origin story for a superhero, or perhaps a supervillain, not less than as he and his members of the family inform it. That could be by design: Musk has a penchant for self-mythologizing, casting himself as the only real hero of advanced origin tales like that of Tesla’s founding.

Already, one of many e book’s vital passages has sparked geopolitical drama — and an embarrassing public walk-back by Isaacson. In an excerpt from the e book printed in The Washington Publish on Friday, Isaacson recounts how Musk single-handedly foiled a Ukrainian sneak assault on a Russian naval fleet in Crimea by chopping off the Starlink satellite tv for pc web service Ukraine’s drones had been counting on. Isaacson writes that Musk made the choice as a result of he feared the assault may result in nuclear warfare, based mostly on his dialog weeks earlier with a Russian ambassador.

However when CNN obtained the excerpt and reported on it, Musk tweeted a special account. He stated he didn’t reduce Ukraine’s Starlink service in Crimea; it was already deactivated there, and he refused the Ukrainians’ emergency request to activate it so they may perform the assault. Isaacson tweeted Friday that Musk’s model of the story was correct, that means the passage in his e book is deceptive.

The bigger concern is whether or not Isaacson’s heavy reliance on Musk as a major supply all through his reporting stored him too near his topic. Swaths of the e book are instructed largely by means of Musk’s eyes and people of his confidants. And nearly all of tales about his exploits solid him because the genius protagonist at the same time as they expose his self-destructive tendencies or his capability for cruelty.

To his credit score, the e book boasts a lot of citations for sources and interviews. Isaacson additionally takes care to incorporate corroborating or conflicting accounts of controversial episodes, reminiscent of Musk’s vicious grudge towards Tesla’s authentic founders. (If you happen to ever need make an enemy for all times, attempt standing between Musk and full credit score for a venture he was concerned in.) And, opposite to a few of his most adamant critics, Musk actually does appear to own a outstanding mind for physics, engineering and enterprise — if maybe not for working a social media agency. Isaacson persuasively dismisses the notion that Musk owes his success largely to inherited wealth, or that he’s a huckster profiting solely from the innovations of others. Musk’s corporations have thrived each due to and regardless of him.

Isaacson at occasions interjects his personal, typically dryly humorous, counterpoints to a few of Musk’s extra outlandish claims. After he quotes Musk enthusing about his far-fetched Hyperloop plan, “That is going to vary the whole lot,” Isaacson begins the subsequent paragraph: “It didn’t change the whole lot.” (What it did change, by some reckonings, had been California’s plans to construct a high-speed rail line, which Musk has acknowledged he sought to undermine.)

In one among his most entertaining and revealing bits of authentic reporting, Isaacson fills within the backstory behind a collection of technical glitches that plagued Twitter in late 2022 and early 2023, and it doesn’t disappoint.

Learn an excerpt from “Elon Musk” by Walter Isaacson

Steamrolling previous Twitter staff’ warnings, Musk insisted on instantly shifting hundreds of the corporate’s laptop servers from a Sacramento knowledge middle to a different facility to economize. Once they balked, insisting it could take months to do safely, Musk dragooned a carful of family and friends into canceling their Christmas plans to drive to Sacramento, the place he personally disconnected one of many servers with the assistance of a safety guard’s pocket knife. He then known as in a crew of staff to begin loading the remainder onto a semi truck and a few shifting vans.

On many events over time, Musk has horrified deputies with these kinds of stunts, solely to be vindicated once they repay handsomely. However on this case it turned out the staff, whom he had threatened to fireplace for his or her timidity, had been proper. The transfer induced cascading glitches in Twitter’s software program, together with those that stricken a extremely anticipated stay audio occasion with presidential candidate Ron DeSantis the next Might.

The Musk we all know at this time is a special one from the Musk Isaacson started following in 2021. Since then, he has lurched rightward politically, embracing conspiracies and railing that the “woke thoughts virus” may unravel civilization; staged a dramatic takeover of Twitter, restoring banned accounts together with Donald Trump’s whereas alienating advertisers and the mainstream media; been accused of sexual misdeeds and revealed as the key father of a number of further youngsters; based a brand new AI firm; and turn out to be an influence dealer in each the Ukraine warfare and Republican politics. And that’s leaving out quite a bit.

Isaacson pins the modifications not less than partly on the pandemic, which drew out Musk’s conspiratorial facet, supercharged his Twitter habit, and amped up his pure distrust of bureaucratic laws as covid-19 restrictions hampered Tesla manufacturing in California and China. In some methods, as Isaacson factors out, Musk is changing into extra like his father, Errol, whom Isaacson has discovered in recent times to be descending into full-on paranoia, conspiracism and overt racism.

So what does Isaacson in the end make of Elon? In a short, closing evaluation, Isaacson takes us again to the place he began. The tech tycoon’s “epic feats” don’t excuse his “unhealthy habits,” however “it’s essential to know how the strands are woven collectively, typically tightly.”

A tougher, however extra fruitful query than the way to reconcile Musk’s idealism and noteworthy achievements along with his “demon mode,” as Grimes calls it, might need been: What does it say about our world at this time that a lot will depend on a person like Musk? That the destiny of electrical automobiles, self-driving vehicles, public infrastructure tasks, world house exploration, the principles of on-line discourse, and the life and loss of life of navy combatants may be altered on the whim of a notoriously whimsical man? And if he ever does go full Errol, will there be something we are able to do about it?

Simon & Schuster. 688 pp. $35