December 13, 2024 • 11 mins
Dive into Walter Isaacson's latest biography, Elon Musk, an in-depth exploration of the visionary entrepreneur's life, challenges, and unrelenting drive for innovation. This detailed review highlights the meticulous research and storytelling that captures Musk's complexity, motivations, and impact on industries ranging from space exploration to social media.
(00:00) - Welcome & Book Introduction
(00:30) - Comparing Isaacson's & Vance's Biographies
(01:10) - Walter Isaacson: The Biographer's Credentials
(02:15) - Book Structure: A Deep Dive into 95 Chapters
(03:50) - The Early Years: Childhood and PayPal Mafia
(04:40) - SpaceX Beginnings: Overcoming Challenges
(06:20) - The Second Half: A Day-to-Day View of Musk
(08:00) - "Demon Mode": Musk's Work Ethic Explored
(09:15) - Relationships & Personal Life: A Brief Look
(10:10) - Comparing Isaacson's Work to Others
(10:40) - Final Thoughts & Personal Takeaways
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:00):
If you're not failing,
you're not innovating
enough.
Welcome back. Nia at mortal lines. So another edition of the mere mortals book reviews.
One here, and today I've got a
bat boy with me today.
It is Elon Musk by Walter
Isaacson.
Now
(00:20):
this book
was
600
plus,
pages. Yeah. I'm just opening it up at random minutes. It's 600 plus pages. It's quite quite a bit of work. This particular,
biography was released
in 2023.
Now
I've previously
reviewed or read Ashley Vance's
(00:44):
autobiography on Elon Musk, and it was the
unofficial one. However, it did capture a lot of information
going back quite,
some time in terms of the years around how Elon Musk came around,
to kinda combining in to form PayPal with the PayPal mafia back in the day, everything that he was doing before then.
(01:05):
And that particular book, if I recall correctly, went all the way until 2016
when the book was actually released. So this is a more later biography.
It is by someone who
is renowned
for being
a autobiographer,
I guess, of really quite famous people. So I kinda wanted to start there on Walter Isaacson. If you don't know who he is, I'll let me fill you in. He written biographies
(01:29):
of Jennifer Dounner, Leonardo da Vinci,
Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, and Harry Kissinger. Now he, Walter, he had been the editor of Time and CEO of CNN and the CEO of the Aspen Institute. So he himself has done a variety of things, he has done previous biographies, I have read another book by Walter Isaacson and reviewed it here, which was Steve Jobs one. I haven't read some of the others, which are Benjamin Franklin. He got other books, they're not biographies, but he's quite well known for biographies
(02:00):
by and large. About a year ago when this book was released as well, he did quite a lot of podcasts on a lot of media, so he would have seen him potentially in the diary of CEO,
on Lake Friedman, and he talked about a lot of the things that went behind this book. I'd probably recommend some of those things around if you want to understand
more of what what sort of made the nitty gritty details of the book. But I wanna talk about,
(02:22):
you know, what what the book itself is, and separate it a little bit from that previous biographies. And I do know there's another biography out there somewhere
that, I don't even know the name of it, but I thought, why pick that up when I'm getting this?
Walter went down the similar path here, and it is a gigantic book for a reason. Elon Musk himself has done a lot of things. Whatever you may think of him as an individual, let's just say, or where he stands for, or what he stands for, or what he does, the dude's done a lot. And Walter tried to cut the kind of basically break up the book into, I'm gonna say,
(02:55):
kind of into 2 sections. So if you actually go and take a look at the the breakdown of the book, and if you can see the video,
I'll actually hold it up the contents themselves. So that's the 1st page,
the 2nd page,
the 3rd page of contents.
He has broken down this book into 95 chapters,
(03:18):
which is just gigantic,
gigantic chapters.
And all of them kind of, associated with either an event or an activity that Elon Musk has done or something, that's quite notable.
It's usually centered around the
either breakdown successes in relationships,
breakdowns or successes in work perspective,
new things that are being accomplished,
(03:40):
and, obviously, Elon Musk is quite a bit. But I'll break it down into saying there's 2 two sections, which is basically everything
that Walter must have either picked up from individuals,
that happened prior to him being day to day there with, Elon Musk and everything post.
So half the book was
more of a wider lens. It was reviewing
(04:01):
historical review or context of, you know, how SpaceX
really did begin,
the challenges that Elon had in his younger years,
the diabolical, I'm gonna put it, type of relationship that he had with his dad
moving from South Africa all the way to the USA,
everything that he did around businesses and conversations,
the way that he acted
(04:23):
back in those days,
there was there's
so many examples
that give you a good indication from wider lens of, okay,
how did Elon Musk come about to be the individual
that he is? How why does he act his ways? Why does he make some choices which to some seem rational, to him seem evident? Why is he such a risk taker? It's all there in the the first half of the book. And then the second section of the book, tells much more into, I believe,
(04:51):
Walter Isaacson,
basically followed him almost on a daily basis
from 2021
through to when the book was sort of completed. So around, let's just say, 2023,
and he was there in meetings, in conversations,
in private spaces where Elon was going away elsewhere.
And in
that, he gave you a finer grained example of things that happened or occurred throughout the book that you had just more of a of a wider brush,
(05:18):
the first section. So really the book is, you know, wide brush painting, the first half of the book. Second half of the book is really fine stenciled, kinda just demonstrating and showing you when concerns, issues, actions, events are happening,
how exactly it happened, what words we use, how
Elon I guess in in the first section, I guess, is an example that people talked about his,
(05:41):
mentality of going into almost demon mode, and it was it was very broad. Again, it was just, hey, demon mode, it's hard work, it's whatever.
In the second half, there's detailed examples of what that mean, what that looks like, what did he do? Did he forget about the person? He absolutely he forgets about the person that he absolutely
persecuted in a in a meeting, you know, a couple of days later, and it's just the way that he is, It's also the way that he's grown up. It's the way that he has been raised. It's the way that his mind works. So many things.
(06:09):
My
so I guess that's really the the way that the book is sectioned out. Walt Isaacson himself writes books that are awesome, honestly. Like, the the
details
alone in this book make you go, man, this is interesting. Like, it's an interesting book that you're gonna read. But Walter's able to just probably dissect and say just enough. It's not he's not
(06:31):
laboring the point, there's not more than meets the eye, it's very direct about what's happening, that's his biographical
style, I guess I'd just say, so direct to it.
But at the same time explores and shares enough ideas and information to go,
wow. Yeah. I'm glad he put in that detail. At the back of the book, you can also see the amount of people that he actually interacted to make this book come alive.
(06:53):
Of course, as you'd expect, ridiculous amounts, a lot of people who've interacted with Elon, and, you know,
for how busy Elon Musk is as an individual, once again, think about him whatever you want,
dude does a lot of things. Right? The fact that he, on top of that, had the time to share, provide information, and everything else to Walter was pretty impressive.
(07:15):
One probably final call out I'd say about this book that I reckon makes it,
different or or more acute information.
The if you're looking for information around SpaceX, and Tesla,
XAI,
I'd say there's more of a broad painting in
terms of information that's displayed in this particular book. AKA, you're gonna get, there's a lot of detail, but it's it's, at a higher brush. You're not gonna get, this exact meeting happened to Tesla, or this exact meeting happened to SpaceX all the time. But you do get a really detailed view because when the book this book came out, it was very much the Elon buying Twitter,
(07:49):
then turning it into x, getting rid of all the engineers, and there's a very kind of, like, blow by blow definition around
how that happened, the detail of it all. Some other aspects of all of this book, I kinda skipped altogether. I I read them sort of briefly, and then in other times kinda skipped it, which is a lot about his relationships.
Personally for me, I went, I don't know if there's much I'm gonna learn from the the man that is Elon Musk, or some of the thoughts of what happened.
(08:14):
You could go and take one quick little Google to see the very the variety of kids. I think his 12 kids that he's had, the individuals that he's been with. You can tell it's not a it's it's not a priority in his life in a way that it might be for myself, but it's just the way that he, you know, no disrespect to him. It's just the way that he, interacts and focuses in his life. But when, you know, I don't really care to know in 2021
(08:36):
how his relationship broke down with this individual and whatever else. Yep. That's Tim, I was more, and what you'll get a lot from in this book is, you know, how he behaved, how he acts, how he built what he has built,
the circumstances that put him into that place. The things you probably don't wanna be like him. You know, he says in a lot of interviews, you you don't wanna be like him, and this gives you probably the best glimpse,
(09:00):
apart from probably sitting with the guy for, like, 5 hours or listening to him a really long form podcast of
yeah.
You you have to be one of a kind to act in this way in all the good ways and all the bad ways.
So Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson. I really enjoyed it. It it personally for me, like, motivated me in a variety of ways I was reading it, purely in the fundamentals of, holy crap, I could be doing way more in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, just
(09:28):
sheer drive of doing things. And while I dread this particular book, I guess, Walter, Walter's to to gain from this as much as Elon is himself, and that it helped me, it motivated me to do more, be more. There was a lot of direct learnings I took from that. Beyond that, just the amount of things that are being done, it was just awesome to read and get to get to know the detail. Without the drama, which there is a lot of drama in his life. I think Walt did a pretty good job in keeping it out of the book.
(09:56):
Yeah. There's a lot of information there that's it's worth knowing. It's it's nice to understand. It's reading reading what the history books will probably summarize in a 100 years time, in the moment. So it's quite cool.
I gave it myself personally out of 10. Similar books, obviously gotta recommend the other biographies by Walter Isaacson. Steve Jobs one was awesome. You you may recognize that I'm not giving you any details here about Elon himself.
(10:19):
I think the book itself, go read that if you want that, we'll give you that detail, or find it elsewhere. I'm just telling you
the review by Walter Isaacson is always gonna be a pretty good one, and he doesn't disappoint with this one.
If you if you have to, probably read this over Ashley Vance's biography, more reason, more detail, better in, fair enough, all said.
But, yeah, that's probably it for me. The Immortal Alliance on the book from Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson. Really enjoyed it. Fat read, but I smashed this in about 3 weeks. I was that motivated to read it through even though I was, probably skipped about 30 pages. Let's just say I have the 600, but, yeah, I was eating it up. Gobble gobble gobble.
(10:56):
Right? The immortalized, I'll leave it there. If again, if you wanna support us, make sure you go and do all the things. Comment, share it, send it through to people. You can also send us through Boostagram, support it in that way, Valley for Valley, podcasting 2.0. Go check it out if you if you need to know what that is, in all the many ways, and be on the lookout as well for my learnings
of this particular book, which I usually tab, and there's quite a few of them. So I'll leave it there for now. The immortal light one out.
If you're not failing,
you're not innovating
enough.
Welcome back. Nia at mortal lines. So another edition of the mere mortals book reviews.
One here, and today I've got a
bat boy with me today.
It is Elon Musk by Walter
Isaacson.
Now
(00:20):
this book
was
600
plus,
pages. Yeah. I'm just opening it up at random minutes. It's 600 plus pages. It's quite quite a bit of work. This particular,
biography was released
in 2023.
Now
I've previously
reviewed or read Ashley Vance's
(00:44):
autobiography on Elon Musk, and it was the
unofficial one. However, it did capture a lot of information
going back quite,
some time in terms of the years around how Elon Musk came around,
to kinda combining in to form PayPal with the PayPal mafia back in the day, everything that he was doing before then.
(01:05):
And that particular book, if I recall correctly, went all the way until 2016
when the book was actually released. So this is a more later biography.
It is by someone who
is renowned
for being
a autobiographer,
I guess, of really quite famous people. So I kinda wanted to start there on Walter Isaacson. If you don't know who he is, I'll let me fill you in. He written biographies
(01:29):
of Jennifer Dounner, Leonardo da Vinci,
Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, and Harry Kissinger. Now he, Walter, he had been the editor of Time and CEO of CNN and the CEO of the Aspen Institute. So he himself has done a variety of things, he has done previous biographies, I have read another book by Walter Isaacson and reviewed it here, which was Steve Jobs one. I haven't read some of the others, which are Benjamin Franklin. He got other books, they're not biographies, but he's quite well known for biographies
(02:00):
by and large. About a year ago when this book was released as well, he did quite a lot of podcasts on a lot of media, so he would have seen him potentially in the diary of CEO,
on Lake Friedman, and he talked about a lot of the things that went behind this book. I'd probably recommend some of those things around if you want to understand
more of what what sort of made the nitty gritty details of the book. But I wanna talk about,
(02:22):
you know, what what the book itself is, and separate it a little bit from that previous biographies. And I do know there's another biography out there somewhere
that, I don't even know the name of it, but I thought, why pick that up when I'm getting this?
Walter went down the similar path here, and it is a gigantic book for a reason. Elon Musk himself has done a lot of things. Whatever you may think of him as an individual, let's just say, or where he stands for, or what he stands for, or what he does, the dude's done a lot. And Walter tried to cut the kind of basically break up the book into, I'm gonna say,
(02:55):
kind of into 2 sections. So if you actually go and take a look at the the breakdown of the book, and if you can see the video,
I'll actually hold it up the contents themselves. So that's the 1st page,
the 2nd page,
the 3rd page of contents.
He has broken down this book into 95 chapters,
(03:18):
which is just gigantic,
gigantic chapters.
And all of them kind of, associated with either an event or an activity that Elon Musk has done or something, that's quite notable.
It's usually centered around the
either breakdown successes in relationships,
breakdowns or successes in work perspective,
new things that are being accomplished,
(03:40):
and, obviously, Elon Musk is quite a bit. But I'll break it down into saying there's 2 two sections, which is basically everything
that Walter must have either picked up from individuals,
that happened prior to him being day to day there with, Elon Musk and everything post.
So half the book was
more of a wider lens. It was reviewing
(04:01):
historical review or context of, you know, how SpaceX
really did begin,
the challenges that Elon had in his younger years,
the diabolical, I'm gonna put it, type of relationship that he had with his dad
moving from South Africa all the way to the USA,
everything that he did around businesses and conversations,
the way that he acted
(04:23):
back in those days,
there was there's
so many examples
that give you a good indication from wider lens of, okay,
how did Elon Musk come about to be the individual
that he is? How why does he act his ways? Why does he make some choices which to some seem rational, to him seem evident? Why is he such a risk taker? It's all there in the the first half of the book. And then the second section of the book, tells much more into, I believe,
(04:51):
Walter Isaacson,
basically followed him almost on a daily basis
from 2021
through to when the book was sort of completed. So around, let's just say, 2023,
and he was there in meetings, in conversations,
in private spaces where Elon was going away elsewhere.
And in
that, he gave you a finer grained example of things that happened or occurred throughout the book that you had just more of a of a wider brush,
(05:18):
the first section. So really the book is, you know, wide brush painting, the first half of the book. Second half of the book is really fine stenciled, kinda just demonstrating and showing you when concerns, issues, actions, events are happening,
how exactly it happened, what words we use, how
Elon I guess in in the first section, I guess, is an example that people talked about his,
(05:41):
mentality of going into almost demon mode, and it was it was very broad. Again, it was just, hey, demon mode, it's hard work, it's whatever.
In the second half, there's detailed examples of what that mean, what that looks like, what did he do? Did he forget about the person? He absolutely he forgets about the person that he absolutely
persecuted in a in a meeting, you know, a couple of days later, and it's just the way that he is, It's also the way that he's grown up. It's the way that he has been raised. It's the way that his mind works. So many things.
(06:09):
My
so I guess that's really the the way that the book is sectioned out. Walt Isaacson himself writes books that are awesome, honestly. Like, the the
details
alone in this book make you go, man, this is interesting. Like, it's an interesting book that you're gonna read. But Walter's able to just probably dissect and say just enough. It's not he's not
(06:31):
laboring the point, there's not more than meets the eye, it's very direct about what's happening, that's his biographical
style, I guess I'd just say, so direct to it.
But at the same time explores and shares enough ideas and information to go,
wow. Yeah. I'm glad he put in that detail. At the back of the book, you can also see the amount of people that he actually interacted to make this book come alive.
(06:53):
Of course, as you'd expect, ridiculous amounts, a lot of people who've interacted with Elon, and, you know,
for how busy Elon Musk is as an individual, once again, think about him whatever you want,
dude does a lot of things. Right? The fact that he, on top of that, had the time to share, provide information, and everything else to Walter was pretty impressive.
(07:15):
One probably final call out I'd say about this book that I reckon makes it,
different or or more acute information.
The if you're looking for information around SpaceX, and Tesla,
XAI,
I'd say there's more of a broad painting in
terms of information that's displayed in this particular book. AKA, you're gonna get, there's a lot of detail, but it's it's, at a higher brush. You're not gonna get, this exact meeting happened to Tesla, or this exact meeting happened to SpaceX all the time. But you do get a really detailed view because when the book this book came out, it was very much the Elon buying Twitter,
(07:49):
then turning it into x, getting rid of all the engineers, and there's a very kind of, like, blow by blow definition around
how that happened, the detail of it all. Some other aspects of all of this book, I kinda skipped altogether. I I read them sort of briefly, and then in other times kinda skipped it, which is a lot about his relationships.
Personally for me, I went, I don't know if there's much I'm gonna learn from the the man that is Elon Musk, or some of the thoughts of what happened.
(08:14):
You could go and take one quick little Google to see the very the variety of kids. I think his 12 kids that he's had, the individuals that he's been with. You can tell it's not a it's it's not a priority in his life in a way that it might be for myself, but it's just the way that he, you know, no disrespect to him. It's just the way that he, interacts and focuses in his life. But when, you know, I don't really care to know in 2021
(08:36):
how his relationship broke down with this individual and whatever else. Yep. That's Tim, I was more, and what you'll get a lot from in this book is, you know, how he behaved, how he acts, how he built what he has built,
the circumstances that put him into that place. The things you probably don't wanna be like him. You know, he says in a lot of interviews, you you don't wanna be like him, and this gives you probably the best glimpse,
(09:00):
apart from probably sitting with the guy for, like, 5 hours or listening to him a really long form podcast of
yeah.
You you have to be one of a kind to act in this way in all the good ways and all the bad ways.
So Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson. I really enjoyed it. It it personally for me, like, motivated me in a variety of ways I was reading it, purely in the fundamentals of, holy crap, I could be doing way more in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, just
(09:28):
sheer drive of doing things. And while I dread this particular book, I guess, Walter, Walter's to to gain from this as much as Elon is himself, and that it helped me, it motivated me to do more, be more. There was a lot of direct learnings I took from that. Beyond that, just the amount of things that are being done, it was just awesome to read and get to get to know the detail. Without the drama, which there is a lot of drama in his life. I think Walt did a pretty good job in keeping it out of the book.
(09:56):
Yeah. There's a lot of information there that's it's worth knowing. It's it's nice to understand. It's reading reading what the history books will probably summarize in a 100 years time, in the moment. So it's quite cool.
I gave it myself personally out of 10. Similar books, obviously gotta recommend the other biographies by Walter Isaacson. Steve Jobs one was awesome. You you may recognize that I'm not giving you any details here about Elon himself.
(10:19):
I think the book itself, go read that if you want that, we'll give you that detail, or find it elsewhere. I'm just telling you
the review by Walter Isaacson is always gonna be a pretty good one, and he doesn't disappoint with this one.
If you if you have to, probably read this over Ashley Vance's biography, more reason, more detail, better in, fair enough, all said.
But, yeah, that's probably it for me. The Immortal Alliance on the book from Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson. Really enjoyed it. Fat read, but I smashed this in about 3 weeks. I was that motivated to read it through even though I was, probably skipped about 30 pages. Let's just say I have the 600, but, yeah, I was eating it up. Gobble gobble gobble.
(10:56):
Right? The immortalized, I'll leave it there. If again, if you wanna support us, make sure you go and do all the things. Comment, share it, send it through to people. You can also send us through Boostagram, support it in that way, Valley for Valley, podcasting 2.0. Go check it out if you if you need to know what that is, in all the many ways, and be on the lookout as well for my learnings
of this particular book, which I usually tab, and there's quite a few of them. So I'll leave it there for now. The immortal light one out.
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