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    Let's put a stake in the 'great man' biography — starting with Isaacson's 'Elon Musk'

    "Elon Musk" by Walter Isaacson; Simon & Schuster (688 pages, $35) ——— The opening pages of "Elon Musk," the new doorstop biography from Walter Isaacson, the bestselling chronicler of the great innovative men of modern history, are jarring, especially to anyone expecting to be greeted with plucky tales of unlikely genius. On the first page, we're told that Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, ...
    by Brian Merchant, Los Angeles Times Sep 12, 2023 6 minutes
    "Elon Musk" by Walter Isaacson.

    "Elon Musk" by Walter Isaacson; Simon & Schuster (688 pages, $35)

    ———

    The opening pages of "Elon Musk," the new doorstop biography from Walter Isaacson, the bestselling chronicler of the great innovative men of modern history, are jarring, especially to anyone expecting to be greeted with plucky tales of unlikely genius.

    On the first page, we're told that Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, owner of X (formerly Twitter), and currently the world's richest man, was born into a land of incredible violence in South Africa, "with machine gun attacks and knife killings common," where boys have to "wade through pools of blood" on the way to concerts and are sent to wilderness camps that resemble "a paramilitary Lord of the Flies," per Musk. Young Elon is bullied relentlessly — by his classmates but also by his abusive father — until he grows big enough to fight back.

    Introducing the 688-page biography this way seems designed to address toward combativeness and cruelty

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