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Elon Musk is one of the most famous public figures in the last two decades, known for activities from building rockets to revolutionizing the electric-vehicle industry. Yet it was arguably his purchase of Twitter (later rebranded "X"), driven1 as a way to protect free speech, that has seemingly caused the most ink to be spilled writing about him. Musk has become a media celebrity who is currently more famous than the Pope because of his business career.2
A large portion of this is the recent public fascination with Musk. To be sure, few were paying attention when he first began building rockets in 2003. And even though Teslas cars became iconic, there were plenty of whiteknuckle moments along the way as he risked full-scale bankruptcy by essentially cross-collateralizing the then-successful SpaceX with Tesla. But Musk had stabilized both companies by the time he bid for Twitter. And the app has been on the minds of the "chattering" class since at least 2016, when it played an oversized role in the U.S. presidential election. In the aftermath of January 6, 2021, and the banning of Donald Trump from the platform, Musks decision to purchase it became a cause celebre.
Two major books published in the last year - Walter Isaacson's Elon Musk, Simon 8% Schuster (2023), and Ben Mezrich's Breaking Twitter: Elon Musk and the Most Controversial Corporate Takeover in History, Grand Central Publishing/Hachette (2023)-have covered the period of Musks acquisition of Twitter.3 Isaacson, the former editor of Time Magazine and the author of biographies of icons like Ben Franklin and Steve Jobs, was embedded with Musk for two years prior to publication. His account reflects the fact that he was "in-the-room" during the key moments. Mezrich's name may be lesswell-known, but several of his books have been made into movies, including 2008's 21 (about MIT students counting cards in Vegas and starring Kate Bosworth and Laurence Fishburne4) and 2010's The Social Network (about the founding of Facebook, directed by David Fincher5).
Isaacson tells a more traditional life story. He starts with an extensive view of Musk' childhood in South Africa, where he was bullied by both classmates and his own father. Isaacson's account is balanced, pointing out the difficulties Musk had to overcome and the...