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Best Books on Elon Musk

August 24, 2023

The Best Book on Elon Musk

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Futureby Ashlee Vance

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
by Ashlee Vance

This is the most comprehensive biography of Elon Musk currently as it covers the periods from Elon’s childhood up until the present. In contrast, most of the other biographies focus more on either the SpaceX or Tesla periods. 

Ashlee Vance, an award-winning feature writer for Bloomberg Businessweek and a known Silicon Valley historian, writes an account that is both detailed and engaging.

For those interested in the entrepreneurship aspect of Elon’s life, this book is the best book on the period from Elon’s founding of Zip2 (with a few thousand dollars in his bank account and a hundred thousand dollars in student loan debt) to the Paypal days.

Runner-ups

Liftoff Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX by Eric Berger

Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX
by Eric Berger

This is an account that focuses on the founding of SpaceX by Elon and the SpaceX team and is possibly the best book on SpaceX. 

Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica who was a journalist at the Houston Chronicle for 17 years, where he contributed to a Pulitzer Prize finalist reporting covering Hurricane Ike.

Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Centuryby Tim Higgins

Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century
by Tim Higgins

This book focuses on Tesla and is possibly the best book on Tesla for its sweeping and comprehensive history of the electric-car maker. 

Tim Higgins is an award-winning reporter for The Wall Street Journal.