Readers fascinated by the hype of Tesla history will find a gold mine of facts and foibles in this immersive analysis.
A Wall Street Journal tech and auto reporter probes the evolution and histrionics of Tesla and its eccentric billionaire leader.
Higgins begins with the inception of Tesla Motors in 2003 by American engineer Martin Eberhard and his longtime friend, tech entrepreneur Marc Tarpenning, who both wanted to manufacture fuel-efficient sports cars. An early investor in the endeavor, Elon Musk soon joined the company ranks as CEO and fostered multiple rounds of investments from entrepreneurs eager to cash in on his goal to create affordable electric vehicles. With Musk consistently commanding center stage, Higgins chronicles Tesla’s prototype-to-production line, from the Roadster to its Model S, X, and 3 series. Each vehicle embodied intrinsic challenges involving battery production, transmission functionality, and funding—not to mention Musk’s nano-management style and wild Twitter storms, which had been highly criticized since he was ousted from PayPal. Boastful, stubborn, and ego-driven, Musk persevered despite the precarious state of Tesla’s financial health. The company burned through hundreds of millions of dollars each year and often faced dire bankruptcy projections despite a surge of preorders and Musk’s promises to deliver the Model 3. Higgins shows that while these financial and innovation issues seemed fatal to the company’s market longevity, a series of sudden, mostly monetized interventions changed the odds in their favor in what became a “defining feature of the Tesla narrative.” While Musk’s slick tech wizardry and visionary “startup gumption” butted heads with Tesla’s more grounded core of engineers, the company’s success was evident as the Model 3 became the defining product in its line. The author effectively combines his well-honed journalistic skills with revealing perspectives from industry observers, frustrated Tesla staff, futuristic engineers, and Musk himself, creating a spirited report on a company consistently embroiled in a swirl of melodrama and controversy. For an even fuller picture of the Musk aura, pair this one with Eric Berger’s Liftoff.
Readers fascinated by the hype of Tesla history will find a gold mine of facts and foibles in this immersive analysis.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-385-54545-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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