A few months ago, I (admittedly late to the game) read the biography of Steve Jobs written by Walter Isaacson. After being impressed by the unwavering attention to detail and overall thoroughness of the book, I went to research Isaacson’s background. It has been many months since then, and I can accurately say that I still know nothing more about Walter Isaacson than the obvious fact that he is an author; the reason being that my Google search for “Walter Isaacson” was crowded by dozens of results discussing his new biography on Elon Musk.
With some time in between jobs, I decided to pull the trigger and buy Isaacson’s Elon Musk biography. With a page count exceeding six hundred and a picture of Elon Musk spanning the entirety of the book’s cover, the parallels between the Steve Jobs biography were apparent before I even made it out of the checkout line.
Like my experience with the Steve Jobs biography, I was partially skeptical about how much of the content would be new for me. By virtue of being on social media, I have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of headlines regarding Musk or his companies over the years. But, from the start of this biography, I realized how little I truly knew about his story. For starters, I was entirely unaware of Musk’s bizarre upbringing and some of the insane childhood memories described by Isaacson. I knew that growing up during South Africa’s apartheid would lend itself to a different childhood experience than most others, but casually seeing dead bodies in the streets and other forms of blatant violence were shocking to hear about.
As I continued flipping through the pages, the trend of learning more significant facts about Musk that I had never previously heard of continued. As if the length of the biography wasn’t a hint, Isaacson clearly did his due diligence with the research on this book. Like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk is quite controversial and has been involved in many well-publicized scandals over the years. Isaacson does a great job of accurately covering these significant events while blending in quotes from the numerous interviews he conducted.
Unlike the Steve Jobs biography, it felt like Isaacson wove in more of his own voice with this book. Perhaps he saw it as necessary given the occasional lies that Elon would tell, but there were a few instances where Isaacson injected his opinion in ways that seemed unnecessary. Despite having mixed feelings about the occasional subjectiveness, it would be an overstatement to say these were abundant or that any of them affected my perception of Musk. Isaacson was clearly critical of Elon at times but perhaps that is justified given how much time he spent with him in the years of shadowing and interviews leading up to this release.
At the time of writing this review, it would be reasonable for me to claim that Elon is controversial. As a Twitter user who believes the app has regressed since being acquired, I had mixed opinions regarding his character when I started the book. After finishing the biography, I still hold some of my original sentiments but have gained a lot more respect (or maybe understanding is the better word) for all of Elon’s work in the cumulative sense. He has pushed the innovation of multiple industries to previously unimaginable highs and his companies have helped bolster both the American and global economies.
Put lightly, this biography was incredibly well written. Even for someone who has read many articles about Elon and stays up to date with most of his companies, I learned a lot and walked away with a more complete understanding of Musk’s global vision. It was interesting seeing the parallels that Isaacson drew between Elon Musk and Steve Jobs, and it was equally as amusing to see familiar names being mentioned such as MKBHD and Andrej Kaparthy.
My real question, though, is why the novel ended so early. With the acquisition of Twitter being recent, there is still much more left to Elon’s story and that’s ignoring the other companies he has founded. The choice to end and publish the biography so early is largely confusing to me; it would be similar to if Isaacson prematurely ended Steve Jobs’ biography before the first iPhone was released. Elon’s story seems to be far from complete, so I’m curious if Isaacson will revise his biography or if following Musk’s internet presence will be left as an exercise for the reader.
Rating: 4/5