Hubris maximus The shattering of Elon Musk

This revealing debut investigation from Washington Post journalist Siddiqui studies how Elon Musk's erratic behavior and unwavering self-confidence have imperiled his business empire. Siddiqui recounts how in 2018, Musk's tweet falsely alleging that he had funding to take Tesla private landed him in the crosshairs of the Securities Exchange Commission, which forced him to resign his position as chairman of the automaker's board. Contending that Musk routinely overpromises and underdelivers, Siddiqui describes how his attempt to aid the rescue of a youth soccer team trapped in a cave in Thailand entailed delivering a "kid-size submarine" that was too large to traverse the cave's narrow passageways, and how in 2020, he broke a promise to use Tesla's factories to make ventilators. Siddiqui also calls into question the wisdom of Musk's Twitter takeover, detailing how Musk tried to squirm out of the deal by alleging the company misled him about the number of spam accounts on the site after he realized that news of his acquisition caused a nearly 30% drop in Tesla's stock price. Though this doesn't match the novelistic detail or propulsive storytelling found in Kurt Wagner's Battle for the Bird, the meticulous reportage teases out the complex motivations--and, frequently, folly--behind the entrepreneur's high-profile power plays. Musk's critics will find plenty of fodder for their broadsides. Agent: Jane Dystel, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. (Apr.)

A timely look at the mercurial billionaire now as well known in politics as in business. A leitmotif inWashington Post reporter Siddiqui's portrait of Musk is a suit brought against him by the Securities and Exchange Commission for fraud, the alleged violation having been to announce that a funding deal had been secured when it had not, artificially increasing the value of his stock. Another lawsuit enters into the picture, this one filed by a shareholder over Musk's pay, estimated to be "250 times larger than the contemporaneous median peer compensation package." By Siddiqui's account, such things seem to be minor irritations; Musk is "a man with little regard for the consequences of his actions, for the minor aftereffects one might describe asfallout." There's fallout aplenty in this account, much connected to the technology involved in getting his Tesla vehicles to be autonomous, a project that had collateral damage in the deaths of drivers and a pedestrian after the autopilot failed to detect obstacles in the way and that occasioned a shift in rhetoric: "The cars…required 'active, constant, and attentive driver supervision,'" making them "self-driving, but not autonomous." Musk's apparent conviction that he's saving the world with the Tesla and saving the human species with his SpaceX rockets ("We need to be a multiplanetary species, so mankind survives a big meteorite hitting the Earth") makes him something of a character out of Ayn Rand, Siddiqui observes. Musk's solipsistic approach to the world also resulted in one noteworthy turnaround: Formerly a Democrat, he has become an implacable foe of regulation--especially of his own businesses--who of course now has the ear of Donald Trump. It's in this regard that Siddiqui's study makes a useful adjunct to Walter Isaacson's 2023 biography, which is overall the better book. A revealing portrait of a man whom, though chaotic in the extreme, the author considers to be "inevitable." Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.