October 23, 2017sarahylockwood

Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance

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Rate: 4/5

Medium: Audiobook

Overview: My husband has been talking about wanting a Tesla for our next car for years, and upon reading this book I’ve now eagerly jumped on the electric car bandwagon. My exuberance toward my new favorite topic, Elon Musk and his companies has caused me to randomly start spouting fact after fact regarding this innovative entrepreneur to the point Luke had jokingly talked of retracting his previous desire of a Tesla.   Needless to day, I thoroughly enjoyed Vance’s biography of this rather controversial bigger than life character. It is remarkable that he has created or aided in the development of a wide range of subjects from finance (PayPal), space travel (SpaceX), electric cars (Tesla), and solar energy (SolarCity), to his most recent foray into building a Hyperloop. Prior to reading Vance’s new book, I knew Musk as the guy who would pop up in the news every few years with a relatively novel idea, followed by a flurry of articles either bashing or praising the aforementioned proposal. I found his perseverance through difficult times when he was the only one still convinced of his vision inspiring. Both Tesla and SpaceX faced critical times where both companies were within weeks if not days of bankruptcy, however Musk powered through with both companies that are now making innovative leaps in their own fields. It was evident that Musk’s success was due in significant part to the brilliant people he surrounds himself with who put in crazy hours to make the ‘impossible’ happen. Another major theme in Musk’s life is bucking the norm, from wanting to make it possible to send people to Mars to opening Tesla’s patents for anyone to use, thereby encouraging more people to build electric cars. Musk stands poised to be the inventor of our lifetime whose name stands the test of time. Overall, Vance’s chronicling of Musk’s life from his adventurous grandparent’s to his troubled youth, through his maturation to a household name was fascinating to say the least and well worth the read.

 

 

23 comments

  6. Omg, I’m happy you’ve read this book (via audio)! This book has been on my “to-reads” list but your review makes me even more excited to read it.

    Elon Musk’s so cool. He’s like the modern day Tesla!

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  9. Best book ever!!!

    It’s amazing to see how a person from another country can move to america and become one of the most influential people and then you have people who decide to stay in bed…

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  10. Thank you for highlighting the genius of Elon.
    This man is a modern Leonardo Da Vinci, a dreamer, a thinker, a pragmatic, with a goal: to bring man to Mars.
    A legendary enterprise that requires immense resources, but little to little is becoming reality.
    Thanks to Elon Musk I am convinced that humanity will become a multiplanetary species, guaranteeing the survival of mankind in a new world.
    But beware, this new world might be for a few privileged …

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  13. Oh wow did you hear about Elon Musk and Grime’s baby name? Its the weirdest name, X Æ A-12. From what I read though, they changed it to X Æ A xii. What the heck!? It’s just the same but with Roman numerals.

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