Books
Michael Vlismas

Elon Musk

'How did a bullied, introverted Pretoria schoolboy become the world's richest person and arguably humanity's greatest change agent? Vlismas's extensively researched biography does a great job of unwrapping Elon Musk's remarkable life story.'— TOBY SHAPSHAK.
Often in the news for his entrepreneurial exploits and his controversial tweets, Elon Musk is one of the richest and best-known people on earth. In 2022 he made headlines worldwide with his bid to buy Twitter. Who is this boundary-pushing billionaire with grand plans of inhabiting Mars, and what lies at the heart of his vision? Why is he so utterly unafraid of risk?
As an awkward Pretoria schoolboy who loved comics and science fiction, Musk's early years and singular family background were crucial in forming his stellar ambitions. Journalist and author Michael Vlismas, who attended the same high school as Musk, knows well the environment that shaped him and offers new insights into Musk's development, including his troubled relationship with his father.
Tracing his remarkable life, from his South African childhood to his move to Canada at 17 and then to the US — where Musk made millions out of PayPal and built Tesla and SpaceX into two of the world's most famous companies — this is the story of a man driven to preserve the optimism he sees in humanity and find a future for humans 'out there among the stars'.
273 printed pages
Copyright owner
Bookwire
Original publication
2022
Publication year
2022
Publisher
Jonathan Ball
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Quotes

  • Mtashobya Amonhas quoted3 days ago
    ELON Musk, the richest man on planet Earth, is doing everything he possibly can to leave planet Earth.

    His journey from Pretoria boy to billionaire entrepreneur appears destined to end, as he describes it, ‘out there among the stars’. Space does indeed seem to be the final frontier for Musk, and even its vastness appears not enough to contain one of the greatest geniuses of our age, one who is determined to make human beings an interplanetary species.

    This is the future towards which Musk has been moving ever since the age of five, when he first realised that not everybody has a million new ideas exploding in their brains all the time, and that people thought he was strange, and that he might be locked away because of it.

    The boy who grew up reading science-fiction novels and comics became the man who brought much of what he read to life. He built electric cars and space rockets. ‘Science fiction should not be science fiction forever,’ he has said.

    From South Africa has emerged one of the greatest minds of our time, and a man shifting the entire focus of humanity with his vision. A man who has made it his life’s mission to turn human beings into a multiplanetary species in the interests of conserving that rarest and most precious thing that appears not to exist anywhere else in the universe – consciousness.

    The greatest challenge in writing a biography of Elon Musk is that he does not sit still. He is a moving target. A rabbit warren of ideas, theories, arguments and counterarguments. His life is a wild journey, much like the rockets he sends soaring into space. Trying to condense Elon Musk into one book feels a bit like trying to capture the expanse of the Drakensberg on your camera phone.

    So I have tried to provide the story of Musk’s life, and the golden threads that run through it, as a starting point for readers who want to know more about one of the most significant people of our time.

    Although it is not a requirement for an unauthorised biography of this nature, I did reach out to Musk for his thoughts. He did not respond. I also reached out to his mother, Maye, who politely declined to provide input. I first reached out to his father, Errol, in May 2021. I finally received a response in February 2022. His response was as puzzling as the popular portrayal of him: ‘Good day. It is not clear to me how someone who does not know Elon can write a biography on him. Elon spent his entire childhood and youth with me. I am aware of all his affairs from day one to present. Jonathan Ball Publishers were not interested in a series of articles I wrote called “Raising Elon”. The matter is very confusing to
  • Phimphakhwan Phimkanithas quoted2 months ago
    In 1855, Pretoria officially became the new capital of the South African
  • Phimphakhwan Phimkanithas quoted2 months ago
    moved his entire family from Canada to Pretoria.
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