Elon Musk

Executive Summary: This book was pretty enjoyable, but there were parts I found slow. Overall it felt like a pretty balanced biography offering both pro and anti Musk opinions on his success and failures.

Audiobook: Fred Sanders does a good job here. Unlike a fiction book, my main thing from the narrator I want is clearly spoken and good inflection. It can be very easy for the narrator to get in the way of a nonfiction book, and thankfully Mr. Sanders doesn't do that here. Audio is definitely a decent option for this book.

Full Review
I've always been interesting in knowing more about Elon Musk, Tesla and SpaceX. This book proved to be a good resource for that. It's grown a little dated now, especially on the SpaceX front as things are getting very interesting for SpaceX since its publication. I'd love to see an update on both companies in another 3-5 years time.

The similarities of Musk and Steve Jobs are quite startling to me. The author discusses it, and outlines why he feels they are quite different, but I'm not sure I agree.

Musk seems a bit more likeable, but it could simply be that he cares more about his public image than Jobs did. Both seems to be polarizing in that some love them and many hate them. The amount of credit they get also seems to be higher than each deserved too. However I feel that you can't argue that their respective companies wouldn't have been nearly as successful without them.

Even if you don't think Musk offered anything on the technical side of things, his belief in both companies and his willingness to stake so much of his own money on both pushed them through the time periods where either company would have easily failed if owned by someone else.

I was less interested in Mr. Musk's personal life and upbringing, so I found those parts a bit slow. However I think their inclusion is important to the book to get a better understanding of who Elon Musk is, and what drives him.

Overall I thought this was a pretty good book. I've been following both Tesla and SpaceX for a few years, and I'll continue to do so for the foreseeable future. I hope both companies continue to be successful, because I feel like science has always been one of the strengths of America, and it's been something we seem to be taking for granted lately.