The latest biography from Tulane history professor and New Orleans native Walter Isaacson, “Elon Musk,” was released Tuesday after Isaacson spent two years shadowing the richest man in the world.
The book traces Musk’s ascent from a tumultuous childhood in South Africa to his perch atop Tesla, SpaceX and other ventures, which he has used to build electric cars, install a network of missile-tracking satellites and launch human beings into outer space.
Isaacson, who also worked as a reporter for The Times-Picayune, previously published biographies of Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin and Leonardo Da Vinci.
In his latest book on a far more controversial innovator, a reviewer in The Economist wrote that Isaacson offers a “detailed psychological portrait" that highlights Musk’s controversial management style, and his penchant for “furiously reprimanding or even summarily firing employees whom he deems incompetent or insufficiently committed.”
It also sheds more light on Musk’s personal life. The book includes an interview with Musk’s estranged father. It also details how Musk, who has 10 children, donated his sperm so that he could have twins with one of his employees while he and his partner – the singer, Grimes – were expecting their second child. (Grimes didn’t know about his sperm donation).
In a less-positive review for The New York Times, critic Jennifer Szalai observed that Isaacson didn’t always challenge Musk, even when his comments ranged from provocative to downright bizarre.
Szalai pointed to the section where Musk, after being asked about his aversion to political correctness, replied, “Unless the woke-mind virus, which is fundamentally anti-science, anti-merit and anti-human in general, is stopped, civilization will never become multiplanetary.”
“There are a number of curious assertions in that sentence,” Szalai wrote, “but it would have been nice if Isaacson had pushed him to answer a basic question: What on earth does any of it even mean?”
In interviews, including one given during the New Orleans Book Festival in March, Isaacson has countered that his aim is to simply illuminate what makes one of the planet’s most important people tick – not to challenge him.
"I’m the biographer,” Isaacson said. “I’m the observer. I’m Boswell. I don’t sort of say, ‘Hey, by the way, your foot is right where you’re pointing that gun. Why are you going to pull the trigger?’”
Another key section of the book involves Starlink, Musk’s network of missile-tracking satellites that have been used by Ukraine in the war against Russia.
Isaacson reported that when Musk learned that Ukraine was planning a surprise drone attack on Russian forces in Crimea, Musk “secretly told his engineers to turn off” Starlink’s coverage in the area that night, which thwarted the attack.
But last week on Twitter, which Musk renamed X after he bought it last year, Isaacson said Musk didn’t disconnect Starlink on the night of the attack and that the policy had been in place for some time.
“Based on my conversations with Musk, I mistakenly thought the policy to not allow Starlink to be used for an attack on Crimea had been first decided on the night of the Ukrainian attempted sneak attack that night,” Isaacson wrote in his post. “He now says that the policy had been implemented earlier, but the Ukrainians did not know it, and that night he simply reaffirmed the policy.”
Isaacson’s other books include the best-sellers “The Code Breaker,” “Leonardo da Vinci,” “The Innovators,” “Steve Jobs,” “Einstein: His Life and Universe,” “Benjamin Franklin: An American Life,” and “Kissinger: A Biography.” Isaacson co-authored “The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made.”
He is also a former editor of Time magazine and former CEO of CNN. He teaches American history at Tulane.