‘Elon Musk’ by Walter Isaacson, reviewed

If he survives that, ship him to Silicon Valley in the course of the dot-com increase. Give him a relentless work ethic, an habit to danger 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 best way, 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, should 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 lifeless 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 are taking the total measure of an more and more troubled determine whose life’s work and legacy nonetheless grasp 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 means, it could be as a result of Musk is such a fast-moving goal, and Isaacson prioritized revealing anecdotes and behind-the-scenes reportage over a classy crucial lens.

Thankfully, 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 properly 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 study 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 cope with the less complicated 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 fascinating tales a couple of controversial man. He frames it as a personality examine, a quest to grasp 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 straightforward. 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 potential? Seven pages in, there are not any prizes for guessing what Isaacson’s reply can be. Although the vacation spot lacks suspense, the trip is entertaining sufficient, notably for many who haven’t carefully adopted Musk’s excessive jinks. And regardless of the e-book’s size, it zips alongside due to Isaacson’s economical prose and brief chapters.

Musk, who at age 5 traipsed solo throughout Pretoria to achieve a cousin’s celebration after his mother and father left him dwelling as a punishment, has all the time had a bit of 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 principally 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 possibly a supervillain, at the least 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 hero of advanced origin tales like that of Tesla’s founding.

Already, one of many e-book’s crucial 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 reducing 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 struggle, 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 mentioned he didn’t minimize 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 advised largely by way of Musk’s eyes and people of his confidants. And the vast majority 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 numerous citations for sources and interviews. Isaacson additionally takes care to incorporate corroborating or conflicting accounts of controversial episodes, equivalent to Musk’s vicious grudge in opposition to Tesla’s unique founders. (In the event you ever need make an enemy for all times, attempt standing between Musk and full credit score for a challenge 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 firms have thrived each due to and despite him.

Isaacson at occasions interjects his personal, generally 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 alter every thing,” Isaacson begins the subsequent paragraph: “It didn’t change every thing.” (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 certainly one of his most entertaining and revealing bits of unique reporting, Isaacson fills within the backstory behind a sequence 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 transferring hundreds of the corporate’s pc servers from a Sacramento information middle to a different facility to economize. Once they balked, insisting it might 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 referred to as in a staff of staff to start out loading the remainder onto a semi truck and a few transferring vans.

On many events over time, Musk has horrified deputies with these types 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 triggered cascading glitches in Twitter’s software program, together with those that troubled a extremely anticipated dwell audio occasion with presidential candidate Ron DeSantis the next Might.

The Musk we all know in the present day 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 extra kids; based a brand new AI firm; and change into an influence dealer in each the Ukraine struggle and Republican politics. And that’s leaving out rather a lot.

Isaacson pins the modifications at the least partly on the pandemic, which drew out Musk’s conspiratorial aspect, 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 finally 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 “dangerous conduct,” however “it’s necessary to grasp how the strands are woven collectively, generally tightly.”

A tougher, however extra fruitful query than the right way to reconcile Musk’s idealism and noteworthy achievements together with his “demon mode,” as Grimes calls it, may need been: What does it say about our world in the present day that a lot is determined by a person like Musk? That the destiny of electrical automobiles, self-driving automobiles, public infrastructure initiatives, international area exploration, the principles of on-line discourse, and the life and dying of navy combatants might be altered on the whim of a notoriously whimsical man? And if he ever does go full Errol, will there be something we will do about it?

Simon & Schuster. 688 pp. $35