Elon Musk

When Elon Musk was a child in South Africa, he was often bullied. One day a group of children pushed him down some concrete stairs and kicked him until his face swelled up like a ball. He spent a week in the hospital. But his physical scars were insignificant compared to the emotional ones caused by his father, a scoundrel, charismatic and fanciful engineer. When Elon came home after being released from the hospital, his father scolded him. "I had to listen to him for an hour while he yelled at me, called me an idiot, and told me I was useless," he recalls. The psychological impact that his father caused him lasted. He became a strong but vulnerable young man at the same time, prone to sudden mood swings - like Jekyll and Hyde -, with a great tolerance for risk, a desire for drama, an epic sense of mission and a manic, cruel and aggressive intensity. sometimes destructive. In early 2022, after a year marked by the launch of thirty-one SpaceX satellites, the sale of a million Tesla cars, and becoming the richest man on earth, Musk ruefully confessed his drive to provoke the drama. "I need to change my mindset so that I'm not in crisis mode like I've been for the last fourteen years, or probably my entire life," he explained. It was a wistful comment, not a New Year's resolution. When he made the pledge, he was secretly buying shares in Twitter, the quintessential playground. Over the years, when he was in a difficult moment, he would find himself transported back to the bullying he suffered in the schoolyard. He now had the chance to possess it. For two years, Isaacson shadowed Musk, attending his meetings, touring his factories together, and spending hours interviewing him, his family, friends, colleagues, and his adversaries. The result is an intimate and revealing account, filled with astonishing stories, triumphs and disruptions, that addresses the question: Are the demons that drive Musk also what is needed to drive innovation and progress?