Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future - Ashlee Vance - ★★★★.¾

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AUTHOR: Ashlee Vance
GENRE: Biography
PUBLICATION DATE: May 19, 2015
RATING: 4.75 stars.


Think Elon Musk and the first few words that would come to mind would be brilliant, innovative, passionate, successful, rich, famous, and so on. But hardly anyone would think eccentric or rude or arrogant. "Elon Musk: SpaceX, Tesla and the Quest for a Fantastic Future" reveals the true Elon Musk like nothing else.

I've admired Elon Musk since a long time, for his brains and lateral ideas vis-à-vis his plans for Mars travel and electric cars. Thus it was not a difficult decision to go for this book. And what an enjoyable ride it has been! I'm more in awe of the man now, though I have also come to realise that I could never work under a boss such as him.

"Elon Musk: SpaceX, Tesla and the Quest for a Fantastic Future" covers the extraordinary life of this talented inventor-cum-businessman in great detail. From his childhood pains to his troubled marriages, from his early ventures to his plans for the future, from his tragedies to his triumphs, nothing has been left unturned. You get a complete inside picture into the story of a man who has achieved such tremendous success with a bit of luck and a whole lot of hard work & sacrifice, and with no compromise on his dreams and beliefs.

Ashlee Vance does a splendid job of uncovering the man behind the myth. As a true biographer should, he has made this book totally unbiased and thoroughly researched. A spade has been called a spade without any sycophantic attitude. And that's what takes this book even further up a notch.

For anyone who enjoys biographies, for anyone who loves business books, for anyone who admires lateral thinking, for anyone who wants to see the private battles fought by the publicly successful, and for anyone who is a fan of Elon Musk, this book is a must.

The only downside of the book has been this creation of a strangely unnatural craving in my heart to own a Tesla car. I have never ever been a car person but the way the Model S has been described in the book, oh my! Hope this idiotic desire dies soon. I really can't afford a Tesla! 😂😂


Disclaimer updated in 2020: In my defence, I read this before I discovered that Elon Musk is a nutcase. I still have good feelings for the book and the author, but all the positive adjectives next to Musk's name have flown away with the little Tweetie bird. Currently, he is just 'X' to me.

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