Elon Musk

Author Ashlee Vance
Narrator Fred Sanders
Publisher Ebury Publishing
Publish Date 28 April 2016
Run Time 13 hours and 24 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Biography: business and industry, Biography: science, technology and medicine, Entrepreneurship, Inventions and inventors.

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

A remarkable man in possession of limitless curiosity and intellect, Elon Musk makes a fascinating subject.

Tech reporter Ashlee Vance has shadowed him for a year to bring us an engaging and deeply personal account of the man who wants to send us into outer space.

South African-born Elon Musk is the renowned entrepreneur and innovator behind PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity. Musk wants to save our planet; he wants to send citizens into space, to form a colony on Mars; he wants to make money while doing these things; and he wants us all to know about it.

He is the real-life inspiration for the Iron Man series of films starring Robert Downey, Jr. The personal tale of Musk's life comes with all the trappings one associates with a great, drama-filled story. He was a freakishly bright kid who was bullied brutally at school and abused by his father. In the midst of these rough conditions and the violence of apartheid South Africa, Musk still thrived academically and attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he paid his own way through school by turning his house into a club and throwing massive parties.

He started a pair of huge dot-com successes, including PayPal, which eBay acquired for $1.5 billion in 2002. Musk was forced out as CEO and so began his lost years, in which he decided to go it alone and baffled friends by investing his fortune in rockets and electric cars. Meanwhile Musk's marriage disintegrated as his technological obsessions took over his life...

Elon Musk is the Steve Jobs of the present and the future, and for the past 12 months he has been shadowed by tech reporter Ashlee Vance. Elon Musk is an important, exciting and intelligent account of the real-life Iron Man.

© Ashlee Vance 2015 (P) Penguin Audio 2016

Critics Review

For anyone interested in technology, entrepreneurship or the price of greatness, Ashlee Vance’s new book is a tremendous look into arguably the world’s most important entrepreneur. Vance paints an unforgettable picture of Musk’s unique personality, insatiable drive and ability to thrive through hardship. The book bursts with telling anecdotes and quotes that illuminate who Musk is

The Washington Post

Exhaustively reported . . . this work will likely serve as the definitive account of a man whom so far we’ve seen mostly through caricature. By the final pages, too, any reader will sense the need to put comparisons to Steve Jobs aside. Give Musk credit. There is no one like him

New York Times

A book that is smart, light on its feet and possesses a crunchy thoroughness. . . . Mr Vance delivers a well-calibrated portrait of Mr Musk, so that we comprehend both his friends and his enemies. It’s a book with many ancillary pleasures. Mr Vance brings us up to date on the states of green energy and space launches. He also veers away from his subject just often enough, offering profiles of the frequently brilliant people who work alongside Mr Musk. The best thing Mr Vance does in this book, though, is tell Mr Musk’s story simply and well

The New York Times

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