In Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, veteran technology journalist Ashlee Vance provides the first inside look into the extraordinary life and times of Silicon Valley’s most audacious entrepreneur. Written with exclusive access to Musk, his family and friends, the book traces the entrepreneur’s journey from a rough upbringing in South Africa to the pinnacle of the … of the global business world. Vance spent over 40 hours in conversation with Musk and interviewed close to 300 people to tell the tumultuous stories of Musk’s world-changing companies: PayPal, Tesla Motors, SpaceX and SolarCity, and to characterize a man who has renewed American industry and sparked new levels of innovation while making plenty of enemies along the way.
Vance uses Musk’s story to explore one of the pressing questions of our time: can the nation of inventors and creators which led the modern world for a century still compete in an age of fierce global competition? He argues that Musk–one of the most unusual and striking figures in American business history–is a contemporary amalgam of legendary inventors and industrialists like Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Howard Hughes, and Steve Jobs. More than any other entrepreneur today, Musk has dedicated his energies and his own vast fortune to inventing a future that is as rich and far-reaching as the visionaries of the golden age of science-fiction fantasy.
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This biography of Elon Musk is incredible. I have learned so much, both about Musk and the exciting technologies going into Space X. Superb.
Musk is an amazing guy, and Elon Musk is an excellent profile. There’s a lot missing (PayPal is all of a sudden a billion-dollar company), but I enjoyed learning a bit about the thought process behind SpaceX, Tesla, SolarCity, and PayPal.
This book was already somewhat outdated when I read it, but nonetheless worth reading. This book talks about the “Falcon heavy” as a future project, but the heavy has already been successfully launched before I read it. I was intrigued by SpaceX especially after seeing something weird in the southern sky one morning at home and finding out it was …
I had little or no information about Elon Musk, so this was an eye opener!, he is quite an individual.
Elon Musk, or Tony Stark as he is sometimes jokingly referred to as, is the mad scientist of this century. And yet, he is also a successful mad scientist. A man with a vision, a dream and he strives to fulfil this at all cost.
What is not to admire about that?
His dream, let’s get a colony on Mars … that’s it.
And so, in the process, he has …
An amazing inside look into Elon Musk’s mind. Blood, sweat & tears of Elon show how he thinks, his business mind. Yet all part of his life is in one. Along with how former employees and others who know him or know the side of him they dealt with. Two sides of a brilliant man. I enjoyed seeing all sides of Elon. There were a lot from his …
This is a glimpse at the man of the century, Elon Musk. From an unremarkable but unpleasant start in South Africa to the force behind Earth’s best chance at space travel and solar energy, Ashlee Vance tries to give us a look at Elon, the man behind the ideas and the intellect. I’m sure it wasn’t easy getting this dynamo to stay still long enough …
I very much enjoyed learning about the life of Elon Musk. This book went beyond the sensationalism and got down to some of Musk’s original drivers, and it did a great job showing Musk’s desire to make serious changes to the world, space, and the survival of humanity.
Wow, I really loved this book. Really loved it. It’s the freshest read I’ve had in a long time. Honestly, I didn’t know much about Elon at all before I started reading this book. I’d just heard of his name being mentioned at social events where people would mention some fantastic thing he was up to. I knew about some of his rocket stuff and Tesla, …
Very good book! Not only informative of who he is but how he thinks. If your interested in Elon, this is a must read.
Couldn’t get into it. the character wasn’t well developed enough to engage my interest.
Easy to follow biography of one of the most influential people of the 21st century. Interesting life, interesting person, interesting read, I liked it.
Interesting read about a very interesting person. His experience could only happen in America. This is still the land of opportunity. SpaceX and Tesla remain in the news everyday.
loved it!
Nice book
Musk is an amazing individual who has amazing vision and an ability to motivate others to an extent not often seen. Presently he is building amazing cars, operating a commercial rocket manufacturing and launching business and producing a new type of electrical storage battery that has the potential to dramatically reduce the environmental impact …
Elon Musk is a very informative book about one of today’s most controversial figures.
What I’ve taken away from reading this book, the one about Bezos and the one about Steve Jobs is that you can’t be nice at this level. These guys are definitely “not nice”. Overall the book is well constructed, boring at first with his childhood but setting the stage was important as you can clearly see he wasn’t the average kid. Good book, highly …
Just for the fact that Elon Musk is the subject of this book, makes it automatically a 5, but the book is really well done
Not exactly a page turner, the first chapters are more about the author than Musk.