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Walter Isaacson, who has written critically acclaimed biographies of Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin and extra, will launch his subsequent tome, targeted on Elon Musk on September 12.
Simon & Schuster has began taking preorders for the 688-page e-book that, based mostly on the preview the writer provided, appears to supply a sympathetic take a look at the controversial proprietor of Twitter, Tesla and SpaceX.
“When Elon Musk was a child in South Africa, he was frequently overwhelmed by bullies,” the e-book’s Web site reads. “Someday a gaggle pushed him down some concrete steps and kicked him till his face was a swollen ball of flesh. He was within the hospital for every week. However the bodily scars have been minor in comparison with the emotional ones inflicted by his father, an engineer, rogue, and charismatic fantasist.”
That childhood, the writer says, left a long-lasting influence on Musk’s psyche, turning him into “a troublesome but weak man-child, susceptible to abrupt Jekyll-and-Hyde temper swings, with an exceedingly excessive tolerance for threat, a yearning for drama, an epic sense of mission, and a maniacal depth that was callous and at instances damaging.”
Musk and Isaacson agreed to work collectively on the bio in 2021—and Musk Tweeted news of the book roughly 20 minutes after they’d spoken, earlier than Isaacson’s agent was even conscious. (In that very same thread, Musk did not rule out writing his personal autobiography at some point.)
Isaacson spent the subsequent two years attending conferences with Musk, talking along with his mates, household and rivals, and shadowing him as he went about his day.
At the start of final 12 months, Simon & Schuster says, as he was secretly shopping for shares of Twitter, Musk instructed Isaacson: “I have to shift my mindset away from being in disaster mode, which it has been for about fourteen years now, or arguably most of my life.”
Isaacson beforehand previewed the e-book in an interview with Kara Swisher and indicated Musk’s childhood could be an overriding them in his exploration of the entrepreneur.
“We begin the e-book with this astonishingly tough childhood in South Africa with a father who’s Darth Vader and who nonetheless remains to be alive, however haunts Elon on daily basis,” he stated.
He additionally indicated he was braced for criticism about how Musk is portrayed.
“[He’s] probably the most attention-grabbing individual on the planet proper now doing probably the most attention-grabbing issues and driving individuals loopy within the course of,” stated Isaacson. “And I’m simply there to inform a story story that helps you perceive it. It explains why issues occurred. And there’ll be individuals who say, ‘Oh, you defined it, so you’re justifying this or that or the opposite.’ … I’m gonna get a whole lot of that.”
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