Review by New York Times Review
SINCE THE DEATH of Steve Jobs in 2011, only one Silicon Valley titan seems to carry a similar air of dark mystique. This would be Elon Musk, currently the C.E.O. of the rocket company SpaceX as well as the electric-car company Tesla Motors. The 43-year-old Musk is also chairman of SolarCity, the largest American solar power installation company. His wealth at the moment is estimated by Forbes to be around $13 billion, yet Musk emigrated from South Africa to Canada at age 17 with barely enough money to feed himself, living off the kindness of Canadian relatives and working odd jobs - cleaning boilers, cutting wood - before ultimately signing up for undergraduate classes at Queen's University in Ontario. Not long after, Musk switched to the University of Pennsylvania to study economics and physics. Then he moved west to Silicon Valley and began to build and sell companies. He is now, quite arguably, the most successful and important entrepreneur in the world. The actual details of Musk's ascent are more complicated. As Ashlee Vance explains in this exhaustively reported biography, written with the cooperation (but not the final approval) of the subject, Musk had left home in Pretoria with the ultimate dream of making it big in the United States. His emigration was also a way of running from an emotionally abusive father and a country whose small-mindedness he despised. Dreamy, awkward and bookish, Musk was a teenager with little interest in athletics but a serious interest in science fiction and computers. His natural inclinations explain part of what set his course in life. For those wondering about the deeper roots, Vance, a technology writer for Bloomberg Businessweek, traces aspects of Musk's childhood that made him an extraordinary engine of resilience - for instance, the times his father ordered him and his brother to sit silent for four hours as he lectured them. Or when a band of school toughs that constantly bullied Musk pushed him down a concrete staircase and beat him so badly he needed to be taken to the hospital. "It was just like nonstop horrible," Musk recalls of his school and home life. It is a surprise to feel empathy for a jet-setting celebrity billionaire, but Musk's childhood as recounted in "Elon Musk" is painful to read about - and no doubt excruciating to have lived through. The book makes a persuasive case that money never drove Musk; ideas did. But from the evidence Vance compiles, Musk seems to have been motivated by more than just ideas, which, by themselves, might have pushed the brilliant young technologist toward a career in academia. Rather, he appears to have been driven to show that his beliefs about business and engineering were unassailably correct. Musk's first start-ups, both begun in the 1990s, were built on his computer prowess and the commercial potential of the Internet. These were the web software Zip2 (sold to Compaq, netting Musk $22 million) and the online bank X.com (which merged with the company that owned PayPal and was sold to eBay, with Musk making about $180 million after taxes). He then wagered a large chunk of his fortune on a rocket start-up that aimed to drastically reduce the costs of space travel and, eventually, transport humans to Mars. His friends considered the gamble just shy of insane. Soon after, he invested millions more in a tiny electric-car company, begun by two other Silicon Valley engineers, that ultimately came under his control. Vance traces the chaotic early years of these two firms - SpaceX and Tesla, respectively - with a compelling ticktock of events. We see that Musk is brutal on himself, routinely working 100-hour weeks. He is brutal as a boss, too, often berating or summarily firing colleagues while hogging credit for others' accomplishments. Yet he is without question a leader who pushes risky ideas forward through a combination of long-range vision and deep technical intelligence. He knows how to hire good people and how to motivate them. Most important, he never, ever gives up. This is not a judiciously contextual biography. While rich in stories and scenery, the second half of the book, which describes the more recent successes of SpaceX and Tesla, is marred by chronologically confusing narratives, frequent gushes of admiration and insider jargon. (At one point we learn that "SpaceX needed an actuator that would trigger the gimbal action used to steer the upper stage of Falcon 1.") Readers, moreover, are repetitively told that Musk asks employees for the impossible, though in one instance we're regrettably informed that he also asks for "the impossible on top of the impossible." Most damaging to the latter chapters, I think, are the moments when Vance loses his reportorial distance and adopts Musk's own Silicon Valley business perspective - on the aerospace industry's incompetence, for instance, or on the automotive industry's myriad weaknesses. All too frequently we're left without enough background to understand a highly complex global marketplace, or why Tesla and SpaceX still have significant vulnerabilities as well. These faults hardly make Vance's book unreadable, however. And until we see how things finish up many years from now - Will Tesla crash? Will SpaceX take us to Mars before NASA? Will Musk become the richest person in the world? - this work will likely serve as the definitive account of a man whom so far we've seen mostly through caricature. By the final pages, too, any reader will sense the need to put comparisons to Steve Jobs aside. Give Musk credit. There is no one like him. Musk is brutal on himself, working 100-hour weeks. He is brutal as a boss, too. JON GERTNER is the author of "The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [May 10, 2015]
Review by Booklist Review
Cut from the same mold as such famous technology pioneers as Steve Jobs and Richard Branson, billionaire engineer and entrepreneur Elon Musk is easily one of the most visionary inventors now pushing the envelope of scientific innovation. His Tesla electric cars have already shaken up the auto industry, and his recent start-up company, SpaceX, is already cornering the market on cheap reusable rockets. In this thoughtful and compelling biography of the Silicon Valley tycoon, Bloomberg Businessweek journalist Vance takes on the twin assignments of trying to understand Musk's unique contributions to society and exploring whether it's really possible for one inventive genius to significantly change the world. Vance takes readers inside Muskland, the Southern California factories where Musk works long hours, delves into his rough South African upbringing, and dissects his temperament and sometimes contentious relationships while highlighting Musk's somewhat grandiose ideas about powering Earth with solar energy and eventually terraforming Mars. Vance invites readers to keep watch on Musk's accomplishments and stay tuned for another biography if and when the businessman's futuristic aspirations become reality.--Hays, Carl Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Vance (Geek Silicon Valley) paints a complicated picture of a complicated man in this biography of Silicon Valley tycoon Elon Musk. Vance follows Musk from a difficult childhood in South Africa to his education at Queen's University in Ontario and later at the University of Pennsylvania. Musk's early successes with Internet start-ups were only the beginning. He became the prime mover behind SpaceX, "the only private company to dock with the ISS"; Tesla, maker of the Model S electric car; and SolarCity, a solar power company with a unique business model. Throughout, Vance elucidates Musk's unusual combination of vision, determination, intelligence, whimsy, and ruthlessness that enabled these successes. He describes Musk not as someone "chasing momentary opportunities in the business world" but as someone "trying to solve problems that have been consuming him for decades." Vance ably conveys the reality of this man who is both a dreamer and a doer. Agent: David Patterson, Foundry Literary + Media. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Known for the companies he has founded or developed including PayPal, Tesla Motors, and SpaceX, Elon Musk has had a huge impact on multiple industries and is poised to have a major impact on how the world consumes energy. This timely biography, built on interviews with colleagues, past and present employees, and Musk himself, begins with the story of the businessman's adventurous ancestors, his unconventional childhood, and how an aptitude for programming fueled early successes. The story combines celebrity, science, business, and ambition in a new take on the American dream in which start-ups change the world and the rugged individualist succeeds by building teams. Vance, a tech writer for the New York Times and Bloomberg Business, does an admirable job of balancing the highs and lows of Musk's outsized personality. He writes a thought-provoking chronicle that doesn't suffer for being only a first act, as Musk is still leading the field in innovation. VERDICT Vance's study cuts across genres and will inform even those who follow the tech world closely.--Catherine Lantz, Univ. of Illinois at Chicago Lib. © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A look at aerospace/automotive mogul Elon Musk. It could be said that Bloomberg Businessweek writer Vance (Geek Silicon Valley: The Inside Guide to Palo Alto, Stanford, Menlo Park, Mountain View, Santa Clara, 2007) has provided a much-needed portrait of an Internet-age hero, but that would depend on whether one's idea of a hero is, say, a Doctors Without Borders physician or the self-made founder of Tesla and SpaceX. Musk's ultimate ambition is to someday "die on Mars," a hypothetical event that some of his more outspoken critics may not root against. After enduring a South African childhood marked by divorce and beatings at school, Musk moved to Canada and, from there, the United States, where he earned a degree at the University of Pennsylvania. He left his Stanford doctorate program after two years to participate in the wave of Silicon Valley startups, helming a couple of half-realized but promising business ventures, both of which he sold for millions (one was an early incarnation of PayPal). Soon, Musk's ambitions became too big for the narrow Silicon Valley framework. He took his money and invested not only in a rocket-building company (SpaceX), but also a boutique electric car manufacturer (Tesla), among other side ventures. After years of frustration, Tesla and SpaceX became profitable companies almost simultaneously, and Musk was worth billions of dollars and beset with new aspirations to make human beings an "interplanetary" species. Though Vance doesn't spend the entire book praising his subjecthe does provide peeks at a man who sometimes rules his techie fiefdom by fear and treats his significant others like employeesthe author undermines journalistic objectivity by excusing Musk's tyrannical behavior as the prerogative of a Nietzschean superman working to save humanity. Despite Vance's best efforts, Musk comes off as another megalomaniacal hypercapitalist whose stock in trade is luxury goods and services for luxury clients. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
