Elon Musk

Ashlee Vance spent nearly fifty hours interviewing Elon Musk and hundreds more talking to colleagues, employees, family, and competitors to produce what remains one of the most revealing portraits of a major tech entrepreneur ever written. The arc from a difficult South African childhood to the near-simultaneous near-collapses of SpaceX and Tesla to stunning success is genuinely gripping. Vance does not flinch from Musk's brutal management style and the human costs of his obsessions. The honest limits are two: authorized biographies trade some critical distance for access, and events since 2015 have complicated the Musk narrative in ways this book cannot address. Still, as a window into how an unusually driven person builds world-changing companies, it earns its reputation.