This is the book for those of you who wonder: Who is Elon Musk? The question is whether you will like the answer. Musk is naturally one of the world’s most talked about people in recent decades. Founder, visionary, one of the world’s richest men, Twitter brawler. As the prime mover in Tesla and SpaceX, he has done his part to realize the dream of electric, environmentally friendly and self-driving cars and space travel to colonize Mars. Walter Isaacson is an editor and history professor, who has behind him a number of biographies of the great men of world history. It is difficult to think of a better way to complete the Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs series than with Elon Musk. CHASING RESULTS: That there should possibly be a difference in how you treat wearing parts and employees, Musk does not approve in the slightest. Here he is deeply concentrated in the control room at SpaceX. Photo: Cappelen Damm Isaacson has gained unique access to Musk and his world over several years. The risk is, of course, that the biographer then becomes too closely linked and creates an image of him that is too heroic. I don’t think Isaacson falls into that trap. Isaacson is admittedly careful not to criticize him directly, but he speaks up when he thinks Musk is going too far. Otherwise, he is content to let Musk unfold in all his glory, and let the reader judge. The many faces of Musk According to those close to him, such as musician and ex-partner Grimes, Musk has several, clearly different personalities, which he can switch between in an instant. He can be extremely silly and goofy, making bad puns and quoting old Monty Python skits. BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION: Elon celebrates his birthday by challenging a blindfolded knife thrower to hit balloons. Photo: Cappelen Damm Then there is the icy, hyper-rational engineer personality, which enables him to streamline processes and solve problems. Worst of all is the personality that is simply called demon mode. Then he becomes dark and gloomy, brooding or furious. He can scold employees, threaten dismissal and make completely unreasonable demands, and then apparently forget the whole thing a couple of days later. In short, Musk is most reminiscent of a classic, romantic genius, of the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde type, or Sherlock Holmes. YOUNG INVENTOR: Already in 1984, 12-year-old Elon Musk had completed his first invention: the computer game “Blastar”, which he sold for 500 dollars. Photo: Cappelen Damm The diagnoses are loose. Musk himself believes he has Asperger’s, a mild variant of autism. Bipolar is also mentioned as a possibility. Whether this is true, or whether his eventual diagnoses serve mostly as an excuse for his brutal behavior, is an unanswered question. “Big man’s mad” is a close characterization, if it weren’t for the fact that the man actually carries out his crazy projects. That is, he forces his employees to carry them out, often against hopeless deadlines, against impossible odds. WRECKAGE: Elon with engineers after a rocket launch at SpaceX. Photo: Cappelen Dam Genghis Khan in a Buddhist monastery Musk has developed what he calls the “algorithm”, a process to simplify and improve the production of machines, such as cars or rockets. One of the principles in the algorithm dictates that you should cut out as many unnecessary parts as possible, and preferably a little more. If you do not afterwards have to put back 20 percent of what you cut, you have initially cut too little. This turns out to be a wonderfully efficient way of producing cheaper machines. But Musk apparently has no qualms about using the same method on humans. Reading the chapters about the merciless Musk in action in the comfort and convenience company Twitter is truly a display of culture collision. Think Genghis Khan in a Buddhist monastery. Chaos pilot on home turf Musk has a rhetoric that can sound bloated. He likes to talk a lot about goals such as turning man into a multiplanetary species, saving civilization and humanity. At first, Isaacson thinks of this as a sales pitch, a typical motivational speech, until it dawns on him with mild astonishment that he actually believes in his wild plans himself. Like all heroes, Musk has a dark backstory, a creation story, if you will. Growing up in South Africa was tough, with physical bullying and regular beatings at school. BEAT UP: Musk was once so thoroughly beaten up that he spent a week in hospital. When he got home, his father was ready, forcing him to stand and listen to a bombardment of swear words for a whole hour. Also when it comes to having children, Musk puts his own life into the really big stories. He likes to talk at length about how important it is that people continue to reproduce and that society depends on particularly smart people having more children. I won’t even try to recount the wilderness that is Musk’s current family, with exes, current girlfriends, girlfriends and mistresses. He has around ten children, almost all of them sons, with different women, conceived through a test tube, as a donor or the old-fashioned way. MEET AND GREET: In line with the fantasies of childhood reading, sci-fi novels and superhero series, Musk’s companies are behind many innovations in robotics and artificial intelligence. Here with his son XÆ A-Xii Musk and the robot Optimus. FAMILY TIME: Elon with ex-partner Grimes and child Tau Techno Mechanicus. Photo: Private / Cappelen Damm SCREEN TIME: Father and son united in the study of their respective screens. Never boring The biography “Elon Musk” is both well-written and highly informative. The only weakness of the book, as I see it, is that nearly 800 pages in the company of Elon Musk are simply a bit over the top. But it never gets boring. news reviewer Photo: Cappelen Damm Title: “Elon Musk” Author: Walter Isaacson Translator: Rune R. Moen Publisher: Cappelen Damm Genre: Biography Number of pages: 735 Date: 7 September 2023 Hello! My name is Ola Hegdal, and I am a reader and reviewer books for news. Preferably crime and suspense literature, or non-fiction. Feel free to read my review of “The Anomaly” by Hervé Le Tellier, “You are a farmer” by Kristin Auestad Danielsen or “The Night Runner” by Karin Fossum.
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“Elon Musk” by Walter Isaacson – Reviews and recommendations
