Musk’s first start-ups, both begun in the 1990s, were built on his computer prowess and the commercial potential of the Internet. Rather, he appears to have been driven to show that his beliefs about business and engineering were unassailably correct. But from the evidence Vance compiles, Musk seems to have been motivated by more than just ideas, which, by themselves, might have pushed the brilliant young technologist toward a career in academia. The book makes a persuasive case that money never drove Musk ideas did. It is a surprise to feel empathy for a jet-setting celebrity billionaire, but Musk’s childhood as recounted in “Elon Musk” is painful to read about - and no doubt excruciating to have lived through. “It was just like nonstop horrible,” Musk recalls of his school and home life. Or when a band of school toughs that constantly bullied Musk pushed him down a concrete staircase and beat him so badly he needed to be taken to the hospital.
For those wondering about the deeper roots, Vance, a technology writer for Bloomberg Businessweek, traces aspects of Musk’s childhood that made him an extraordinary engine of resilience - for instance, the times his father ordered him and his brother to sit silent for four hours as he lectured them. His natural inclinations explain part of what set his course in life. Dreamy, awkward and bookish, Musk was a teenager with little interest in athletics but a serious interest in science fiction and computers. His emigration was also a way of running from an emotionally abusive father and a country whose small-mindedness he despised. As Ashlee Vance explains in this exhaustively reported biography, written with the cooperation (but not the final approval) of the subject, Musk had left home in Pretoria with the ultimate dream of making it big in the United States. The actual details of Musk’s ascent are more complicated. He is now, quite arguably, the most successful and important entrepreneur in the world. Then he moved west to Silicon Valley and began to build and sell companies. Not long after, Musk switched to the University of Pennsylvania to study economics and physics. His wealth at the moment is estimated by Forbes to be around $13 billion, yet Musk emigrated from South Africa to Canada at age 17 with barely enough money to feed himself, living off the kindness of Canadian relatives and working odd jobs - cleaning boilers, cutting wood - before ultimately signing up for undergraduate classes at Queen’s University in Ontario. The 43-year-old Musk is also chairman of SolarCity, the largest American solar power installation company. of the rocket company SpaceX as well as the electric-car company Tesla Motors.
This would be Elon Musk, currently the C.E.O.
Since the death of Steve Jobs in 2011, only one Silicon Valley titan seems to carry a similar air of dark mystique.
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