Elon Musk Kindle Edition

When Elon Musk used to be a kid in South Africa, he used to be steadily beaten by bullies. Sooner or later a group pushed him down some concrete steps and kicked him until his face used to be a swollen ball of flesh. He used to be 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 affect 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 used to be 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 the planet—Musk spoke ruefully about his compulsion to fan the flames of dramas. “I wish 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 used to be a wistful comment, not a New Year’s resolution. At the same time as he said it, he used to be secretly buying up shares of Twitter, the world’s ultimate playground. Over time, whenever he used to be 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 question: are the demons that drive Musk also what it takes to drive innovation and progress?