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Cover of Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance

Elon Musk

  • 396 pages · about 7 hours
  • First published 2015
  • 34 editions

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1 About this book

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future is a biography by the technology journalist Ashlee Vance, published in 2015. It follows Musk from a difficult childhood in South Africa to Canada and the United States, through his first internet companies, Zip2 and PayPal, and on to SpaceX, Tesla and SolarCity. Vance interviewed Musk at length, along with people close to him and people who worked with him at each stage; Musk had no control over what was written. A large part of the book is the story of the years when both the rocket company and the car company came close to failing.

  • Biography
  • Businesspeople, biography
  • Technology, economic aspects
  • Biography & autobiography
  • Business & economics
  • Technology & engineering
  • Technology
  • Businesspeople

2 What to expect

A journalist's biography of Elon Musk up to 2015, built on long interviews with Musk and with many people around him. It is strongest on the early, hard years of SpaceX and Tesla and on what it is like to work for him, admiring of the ambition and frank about the harshness. It reads quickly, like a long magazine profile, and it stops well before Musk's later ventures and controversies.

Good for readers who want: a business biography, rockets and electric cars, and a fast, journalistic read.

3 About Ashlee Vance

Born 1977

Ashlee Vance is an American reporter, writer, and filmmaker. He is known for his 2015 biography of Elon Musk, titled Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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