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A review by kyscg
Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson
adventurous
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
It is going to be tough for me to review this book. How do you separate the review of the biography from the review of the person? And a person as mercurial, as contemporary, as important as Musk. Elon Musk is not Isaacson's best work, it reads like it was written in a hurry. More importantly, it reads like it was written for Musk, a literary self-portrait of sorts, where Isaacson feels the need to defend every Musk overture. Having said that, it is a great biography, and I've heard that it complements Ashlee Vance's biography and Eric Berger's LiftOff.
Musk is well and truly alive, and Isaacson spent a lot of time with him around the 2022-23 Twitter acquisition saga. Both these things mean that there is a lot more focus on the recent past, and that is where the book is the strongest. I suspect that the reason for this is we still don't know what actions and decisions are important in the grand scheme of things. On the bright side, we get to see how someone like Musk functions every day. Spoiler: it's right on the edge of every bell curve possible.
If Musk wanted to reclaim some public support, he got it done in the sense that the book reminds readers that Musk is human. That is in a way both redeeming and damning. His impulsive behaviour is very human, and frankly, very normal. His penchant for silly humour, his mood swings, his childlike ambition, flashes of anger, unfiltered enthusiasm for the future, are all very normal. Who among us is a monk? But on the other hand, his tendencies to exhibit his worst sides so publicly and so loudly go against his self-purported vision for humanity. He's wasting energy and proving that absolute power corrupts absolutely. If he wants to do great things, should he just not focus on doing great things and nothing else?
It would be myopic of me to perform a character assessment from a biography, so I shall stop. The book gives a deep inner look into Musk's personality. The episodes about the treatment from his father are traumatic to read. Everything good about Musk arises from his love of building great things, everything bad about him is his father. A perfect internalization of the worst flaws of his father, only redeemed by the bright light that is the thirst for knowledge. Isaacson keeps this theme alive all through the book, is it not possible to push your troops without also putting them down everytime you enter "demon-mode". Leaders should not confuse ruthlessness in execution with ruthlessness towards their teams.
This leads us to the people this affects, the ones around Musk. Unsurprisingly, most quoted in the book have at best, fanatical grovelling and at worst, grudging admiration for the man. This is not a critique as much as it screams, "the lad doth protest too much". Musk doesn't seem to have anyone that is capable of inflicting withering feedback onto him, again, a common trope among people that wield absolute power. It is my theory that powerful personalities tend to alienate well-wishers because everytime they ignore advice and it works out, they reinforce their belief in their invincibility. The momentum of victory is a drug.
When I read a few other reviews of this book, it was mostly people complaining about how Isaacson didn't spend 300 odd pages of the book discussing emerald mines or some variation of the sentiment. Public sentiment around Musk has never been more polarized and that might make us look at Musk as this recent pop culture phenomenon. But Musk is first and foremost an engineer, and that is the strength of this book. His calls to cut everything unnecessary, and fixate on speed is inspirational. All those anecdotes of him getting rid of unnecessary parts, or shaving of extra seconds in a factory, or condensing problems to their first principles, or finding the right metrics to measure progress are very useful to everyone. So many times when employees are outraged by some suggestion, it's rarely because the suggestion is outlandish, and more because they don't like how certain Musk is about his suggestion.
Musk is important because space exploration is important, because we need electric cars, we want to achieve full self-driving, and more. But Musk is wrong if he think we'll get there with flashes of seriousness sprinkled in a bed of largely irresponsible and impulsive behaviour.
Musk is well and truly alive, and Isaacson spent a lot of time with him around the 2022-23 Twitter acquisition saga. Both these things mean that there is a lot more focus on the recent past, and that is where the book is the strongest. I suspect that the reason for this is we still don't know what actions and decisions are important in the grand scheme of things. On the bright side, we get to see how someone like Musk functions every day. Spoiler: it's right on the edge of every bell curve possible.
If Musk wanted to reclaim some public support, he got it done in the sense that the book reminds readers that Musk is human. That is in a way both redeeming and damning. His impulsive behaviour is very human, and frankly, very normal. His penchant for silly humour, his mood swings, his childlike ambition, flashes of anger, unfiltered enthusiasm for the future, are all very normal. Who among us is a monk? But on the other hand, his tendencies to exhibit his worst sides so publicly and so loudly go against his self-purported vision for humanity. He's wasting energy and proving that absolute power corrupts absolutely. If he wants to do great things, should he just not focus on doing great things and nothing else?
It would be myopic of me to perform a character assessment from a biography, so I shall stop. The book gives a deep inner look into Musk's personality. The episodes about the treatment from his father are traumatic to read. Everything good about Musk arises from his love of building great things, everything bad about him is his father. A perfect internalization of the worst flaws of his father, only redeemed by the bright light that is the thirst for knowledge. Isaacson keeps this theme alive all through the book, is it not possible to push your troops without also putting them down everytime you enter "demon-mode". Leaders should not confuse ruthlessness in execution with ruthlessness towards their teams.
This leads us to the people this affects, the ones around Musk. Unsurprisingly, most quoted in the book have at best, fanatical grovelling and at worst, grudging admiration for the man. This is not a critique as much as it screams, "the lad doth protest too much". Musk doesn't seem to have anyone that is capable of inflicting withering feedback onto him, again, a common trope among people that wield absolute power. It is my theory that powerful personalities tend to alienate well-wishers because everytime they ignore advice and it works out, they reinforce their belief in their invincibility. The momentum of victory is a drug.
When I read a few other reviews of this book, it was mostly people complaining about how Isaacson didn't spend 300 odd pages of the book discussing emerald mines or some variation of the sentiment. Public sentiment around Musk has never been more polarized and that might make us look at Musk as this recent pop culture phenomenon. But Musk is first and foremost an engineer, and that is the strength of this book. His calls to cut everything unnecessary, and fixate on speed is inspirational. All those anecdotes of him getting rid of unnecessary parts, or shaving of extra seconds in a factory, or condensing problems to their first principles, or finding the right metrics to measure progress are very useful to everyone. So many times when employees are outraged by some suggestion, it's rarely because the suggestion is outlandish, and more because they don't like how certain Musk is about his suggestion.
Musk is important because space exploration is important, because we need electric cars, we want to achieve full self-driving, and more. But Musk is wrong if he think we'll get there with flashes of seriousness sprinkled in a bed of largely irresponsible and impulsive behaviour.