“Patience is a virtue, and I’m learning patience. It’s a tough lesson.”
As founder, CEO and CTO of SpaceX, CEO, product architect and former chairman of Tesla, owner and CTO of X Corp, and co-founder of OpenAI, Elon Musk is one of the most influential and wealthiest people in the world. According to Forbes, Elon Musk’s net worth is $196 billion as of 2024. Undoubtedly a savvy investor and pioneer in fields ranging from spaceflight, electric energy, neurotechnology and artificial intelligence, he has also established himself as one of the most eccentric and often-times controversial high-profile individuals. Love or loathe him, join us at What We Reading for the best Elon Musk books. These biographies on Musk attempt to make sense of the man, explaining his successes, controversies and undisputed influence on science, technology, politics and culture.
Elon Musk – Walter Isaacson
First up on our list of the best books on Elon Musk is Walter Isaacson’s Goodreads Choice Award-nominated 2023 biography, Elon Musk. The bestselling author of Steve Jobs offers an astonishingly intimate portrait of one of the most fascinating and controversial innovators of our era.
This biography was a result of two years of Isaacson shadowing Musk, attending his meetings, walking his factories and spending hundreds of hours interviewing him, his family, friends, coworkers and adversaries. The result is an utterly captivating read filled with incredible triumphs and turmoil. From his childhood bullies on South African playgrounds to his rogue fantasist father, Isaacson asks whether the demons that drive Musk are also what it takes to drive innovation and progress.
Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX And The Quest For A Fantastic Future – Ashlee Vance
First published in 2015, Ashlee Vance focuses on the brilliant entrepreneurship and innovation behind Musk’s management of the likes of PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla and SolarCity in his biography.
From his tumultuous upbringing in South Africa, his flight to the United States, to his dramatic technical visions and pursuits, Vance uses Musk’s story to ask whether the land that has dominated invention and creation for a century can really compete in a new age of fierce global competition. Putting Musk alongside other legendary industrialists such as Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Steve Jobs, Vance shows how Musk has invested his vast fortunes to conjure up a future that is as rich and far-reaching as the novelists from the golden age of sci-fi fantasy.
Battle For The Bird: Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk And The $44 Billion Fight For Twitter’s Soul – Kurt Wagner
Bloomberg journalist Kurt Wagner takes readers into the tumultuous head offices and headquarters of Twitter in his 2024 business biography, Battle for the Bird. From Jack Dorsey’s triumphant return in 2015, the rise and fall of @RealDonaldTrump, to the contentious and controversial $44 billion sale to Elon Musk, this is a captivating read that chronicles the messy realities and relentless challenges involved with building a global social network.
Definitive, objective and substantive, it is one of the best books on Elon Musk for exposing what made his takeover of Twitter such a controversial chapter in the South African’s life. Minute-by-minute accounts from insider employees chart the takeover, showcasing the real-world impact of the billionaire’s new role as owner and the growing horror as Dorsey’s promises (and even the ‘Twitter’ name) go up in smoke before their eyes.
The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos And The Quest To Colonize The Cosmos – Christian Davenport
One of the best books on billionaires and the sorts of fortunes, visions and egos they possess, Christian Davenport’s The Space Barons is a story of a group of individuals who are pouring their eye-watering wealth into the resurrection of the American space program. Led by the likes of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Richard Branson and Paul Allen, Davenport lifts the lid on how these billionaires are using Silicon Valley-style innovation to lower costs and send humans even further than NASA has ever gone.
Based on years of reporting and exclusive interviews with these four men, The Space Barons is an account of risk, adventure, the new Space Age and how the richest billionaires are attempting to end governments’ monopoly of the cosmos. It is also one of the best Elon Musk books for documenting the fierce rivalries and clashes that are prone to flaring up as they aim for the moon, Mars and beyond.
Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk And The Bet Of The Century – Tim Higgins
Tesla is the envy of the automotive industry. The first car company to be valued at $1 trillion, its electric cars can be found on all four corners of the globe, becoming the de facto symbols of wealth, virtue and innovation. The success of the company turned CEO Elon Musk into a global celebrity and the richest man in the world.
Yet, as Tim Higgins explores in his 2021 biography of Musk and Tesla, Power Play, this success was far from guaranteed. But, where others saw failure, Musk and a small band of Silicon Valley engineers and entrepreneurs saw an opportunity. Higgins charts fifteen hellish years for Tesla as the company battled investors, rivals, whistleblowers and even its own CEO at times before landing on the unlikeliest of outcomes: success. With a front-row seat for all the struggles, breakdowns and breakthroughs, Higgins’ book on Elon Musk and Tesla is a remarkable story of beating the odds and changing the future.
Liftoff: Elon Musk And The Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX – Eric Berger
Just two decades after its founding, Elon Musk’s SpaceX boasts the largest commercial satellite constellation, pioneered reusable rockets and became the first private company to launch a human into orbit in 2020. But, before it became one of the most significant players in the aerospace industry, SpaceX was a fledgling start-up, struggling to cobble together a single workable rocket before the money dried up.
In Liftoff, Eric Berger takes readers inside the wild early days of SpaceX. Travelling from the company HQ in El Segundo, the Texas ranchlands where engine tests were performed to the tiny Pacific atoll, Kwajalein, where the Falcon 1 was first launched, the book focuses on SpaceX’s first four launches as it rose from plucky underdog to aerospace pioneer. Having reported on the company for a decade, enjoying unmatched access, Berger’s biography hones in on how Elon Musk’s enigmatic and daring visions for one day settling on Mars propelled the company and helped kickstart a new era of space engineering and exploration.
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Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk’s Twitter – Zoe Schiffer
Another one of the definitive Elon Musk books on his controversial takeover of Twitter comes from Zoe Schiffer in her 2024 biography, Extremely Hardcore. When the South African billionaire took over Twitter, plenty of commentators were rooting for the visionary behind Tesla to succeed in grabbing power back from the company’s entitled workforce and making it a friendlier space for free speech.
However, once Musk had charged into Twitter HQ, the command-and-control playbook he had honed at SpaceX and Tesla was immediately thrown out the window. Condensing hundreds of hours of interviews with more than sixty employees, thousands of pages of internal documents, Slack messages, congressional testimonies, court filings and presentations, this jaw-dropping character-driven tale is how Musk lit $44 billion on fire, dismantled Twitter and turned the world’s online public square into his personal megaphone.
Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
