Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (Book Review)
This is a Book Review and not a Book Summary.
Elon Musk of Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity, Neuralink, HyperLoop, PayPal, X.com (which later on got morphed into PayPal), and Billionaire reputation is simply the most ubiquitous name in the tech industry today.
And Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance is a book that intends to capture his life in print and IMO, it has come out quite well.
Here is my take on the book:
Overview
If you ask me, I would say the book is as much about Tesla, SpaceX, and to an extent SolarCity as much as it’s about Elon Musk.
There are over 11 chapters spread across 400 odd pages.
Personally, being an engineer and software developer, I found the book very intriguing and fascinating. The book covers Elon’s early days, as in childhood, and moves up until 2014 or so.
Clearly, Musk has made sure that he has a major say on a lot of things that are told in the book (which is kind of understandable if your formative years have been spent fighting off the bad press), but the author deserves true credit for trying as much as he can to bring in a sense of balance to the narration.
Ashlee Vance has done a score of interviews with a lot of people who were or are associated with Elon’s life or work to achieve a very good supplanting of external perspectives.
Writing Style and Tone
The book has the standard narrative approach of this genre, that is biographies, and is not heavy on the word choices either. It’s written in the colloquial English that most of us are familiar with and is easy to comprehend.
I have been able to chew through it in just about 4 days and didn’t quite feel stuck anywhere.
The tone is rather neutral as is expected from a biographer but if I really have to elaborate, I would say there is a tinge of awe towards Elon Musk and his companies.
Also, while reading the book, I had this feeling that anyone from a non-engineering/non-STEM background may find it a bit heavy on the tech side but that’s partly the trade-off you have to make while reading about someone who is so deep into rockets and electric motors.
Vocabulary
If you are an average or above-average reader, you wouldn’t find anything radically new or exploratory on the vocabulary side. But I’d have to say, you might end up picking up some tech-lingo and would have to do a bit of googling to find out what really do the words like drivetrain, battery pack, or tripods visually correspond to.
Target Audience
Anyone who has had undergone any kind of abuse as a child or anyone who is serious about making it big by any measure of effort, this book would teach you a lot on those subjects and how to overcome the ordeals therein. If you are a workaholic or a control freak, you have a great show of excuse to be found in this book. You will also get a great head start on electric cars and outer space-bound vehicles (I mean the rockets).
Return On Investment and Conclusions
ROI on this book is really high for the entrepreneurial spirits or tech-freaks. Elon Musk is really a fascinating personality and is well outlined in this book.
If you have read and been a fan therein of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, this book is a must-read. Although the writing styles of these two authors aren’t quite comparable. Isaacson simply wins the race by a huge margin.
Pick this book if you have been a fan of Musk and/or want an optimistic view of where the future of the automobile industry and clean-energy is heading towards. So far, Elon is a forerunner in those fronts and if it’s your thing, you should definitely read this book.
For others, if you are into biographies, I would say read Steve Jobs first and only then venture into this one. They’re not related per se but there definitely are a lot of parallels that you can appreciate.
Claps, comments (critical or otherwise) and sharing ahead will be highly appreciated.
Thank you for reading.
Laters.
