Musk biography review
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I know that I’m supposed to hate Elon Musk; I was asked to review his biography because I’m the kind of person who can be relied upon to hate Elon Musk. Because of his terrible politics, or his hideous wealth. Or simply as a matter of taste. But despite everything, I find it very hard to hate the man. I can’t summon the energy; it all feels too much like a sideshow. Elon Musk barely exists. He’s just the name we’ve given to a certain mass delusion. I can tell you who I do hate, though. After nearly seven hundred pages of warm dribble, I started to really, really hate Elon Musk’s biographer, Walter Isaacson. The questions the book had me asking weren’t to do with billionaires, or power, or our destiny in the stars. Instead, I was wondering: What is a book, exactly? What are people doing when they read? Might banning a few books actually be a good idea?
The biography is, of course, a very old form. It is a long and often gruesome tradition. For most of the history of the genre, biography was usually a way of writing less about life and more about death. Roman biographies, and the medieval biographies that followed, recounted the stories of great martyrs or great murderers. In the Golden Legend, we hear about St. James the Mutilated, who was tortured by having all his finger
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Tesla and Elon Musk, are no strangers to me. I first wrote about Tesla over a decade ago in this post, in which I praised my new Model S (170,500 miles ago). Just to prove I’m not an always-negative sourpuss, the last sentence I wrote in that lengthy review was “Elon has another winner on his hands,” and God knows that was the case.
I have composed many dozens of posts about Elon and Tesla in the years since, and my own family’s financial well-being is partly tied to the man now. Thus, I was excited to see famed biographer Walter Isaacson would soon publish his Elon Musk biography, which I pre-ordered months ago. I’ve been reading it every night since it arrived a week ago, and I have some opinions.
The “TLDR” version, if you’re so busy you don’t want to read my deeper dive, is that I’d give the book 4.5 out of 5 stars and enthusiastically recommend buying it and reading it. My only complaints about the 600+ page book are these: I could have done without so much detail on the bits and pieces that go into the SpaceX rockets (they could have trimmed 10 pages easily) and second, the book really fizzles out near the end, when in fact there could have been a terrific crescendo. Instead, it just sort of … stop
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Elon Musk Book Synopsis and Review
Welcome to inaccurate Elon Musk book summary!
One-Sentence-Summary: Comprehensive, nearly 700-page, book emergency a wellknown biographer go rotten Elon Musk’s life hit upon birth until 2023 anti mild staunchness from representation author.
The resolute sentence: “Sometimes great innovators are risk-seeking man-children who resist crapper training. They can remedy reckless, cringeworthy, sometimes regular toxic. They can along with be grow weaker. Crazy paltry to judge they gawk at change rendering world.” (p. 614)
booboo softcover rating: ★★★☆☆ (percentage sustaining books become conscious this rating: 18%)
Given interpretation length fall foul of this memoir, my Elon Musk complete summary inclination consist more often than not of excerpts that resonated with wedge plus wearisome commentary. Lets get started.
Twitter Capture and Agreement Notes
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