and other bestselling biographies, this is the astonishingly intimate

story of the most fascinating and controversial innovator of our era—a

rule-breaking visionary who helped to lead the world into the era of

electric vehicles, private space exploration, and artificial

intelligence. Oh, and took over Twitter.
When Elon

Musk was a kid in South Africa, he was regularly beaten by bullies. One

day a group pushed him down some concrete steps and kicked him until his

face was a swollen ball of flesh. He was in the hospital for a week.

But the physical scars were minor compared to the emotional ones

inflicted by his father, an engineer, rogue, and charismatic fantasist.

His

father’s impact on his psyche would linger. He developed into a tough

yet vulnerable man-child, prone to abrupt Jekyll-and-Hyde mood swings,

with an exceedingly high tolerance for risk, a craving for drama, an

epic sense of mission, and a maniacal intensity that was callous and at

times destructive.

At the beginning of 2022—after a year marked

by SpaceX launching thirty-one rockets into orbit, Tesla selling a

million cars, and him becoming the richest man on earth—Musk spoke

ruefully about his compulsion to stir up dramas. “I need to shift my

mindset away from being in crisis mode, which it has been for about

fourteen years now, or arguably most of my life,” he said.

It

was a wistful comment, not a New Year’s resolution. Even as he said it,

he was secretly buying up shares of Twitter, the world’s ultimate

playground. Over the years, whenever he was in a dark place, his mind

went back to being bullied on the playground. Now he had the chance to

own the playground.

For two years, Isaacson shadowed Musk,

attended his meetings, walked his factories with him, and spent hours

interviewing him, his family, friends, coworkers, and adversaries. The

result is the revealing inside story, filled with amazing tales of

triumphs and turmoil, that addresses the question: are the demons that

drive Musk also what it takes to drive innovation and progress?