Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future
Ashlee Vance spent a year following Elon Musk, the South African-born force behind PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity, and the result is a biography that reads more like a thriller than a corporate profile. Musk wants to colonise Mars, rescue the planet from its energy habits, and turn a profit along the way. He's also, for better or worse, very keen that you know about it. The comparison to Iron Man's Tony Stark isn't lazy shorthand; it's genuinely apt. The personal backstory here is extraordinary. Musk was a fiercely intelligent child who endured brutal bullying at school and a difficult, damaging relationship with his father, all against the backdrop of apartheid-era South Africa. Somehow, through all of that turbulence, he excelled academically. At the University of Pennsylvania he funded his own education by converting his home into a venue and throwing parties large enough to cover the bills. You couldn't invent it. His early business career produced two enormous dot-com wins, PayPal among them, which eBay snapped up for 1.5 billion dollars in 2002. Pushed out as chief executive, Musk entered what Vance describes as a kind of wilderness period, during which he mystified his social circle by pouring his fortune into rockets and electric vehicles. His marriage quietly fell apart under the weight of his fixations. Vance writes with the curiosity of someone who found his subject genuinely puzzling and refused to settle for easy answers. The book is sharp, absorbing, and well worth your time.
- Author: Ashlee Vance
- Publisher: Virgin Books
- Genre: Entrepreneurship
- ISBN: 978-0753555644
- Pages: 416 pages