Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Elon Musk contains quite a lot of intriguing vignettes involving everybody from Invoice Gates to Google co-founder Sergei Brin. Two particularly contain Endeavor chief Ari Emanuel, who reportedly proposed working Twitter for $100 million, not lengthy after Larry David had chastised Musk to his face after officiating Emanuel’s wedding ceremony. (For extra about each, learn on.)
Inherent public curiosity in regards to the Tesla/X/SpaceX billionaire — which pushed a earlier biography up the best-seller checklist in 2015 — has been stoked additional by Isaacson’s entry and standing. The writer, previously the editor of Time and head of CNN, adopted Musk for 2 years and interviewed him and lots of others in his orbit. He has additionally written well-regarded biographies of Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein and others.
Isaacson’s pedigree has evidently helped give an early business increase to the 688-page Simon & Schuster title, which is already No. 3 on the Amazon charts. But its publication Tuesday has additionally been greeted by many strikingly unfavorable opinions. Novelist Gary Shtyngart, writing in The Guardian, panned the e book as an “insight-free doorstop,” whereas Brian Service provider within the LA Instances assailed what he felt was Isaacson’s bias, concluding that “it’s time to retire the entire genre of ‘great innovator’ biographies.” Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway additionally tore into the e book on their top-rated podcast Pivot. “I wanted a little more analysis, from the smart person that Walter is,” Swisher observes. “It actually makes Elon boring … and it doesn’t feel soaring in any way.” Galloway complains that the e book’s “idolatry” finally ends up marginalizing or excusing cruelty, misogyny, anti-Semitism and different darkish features of the story.
After all, the evaluate recreation shouldn’t be what it as soon as was, and vox populi assist tends to drown out institution criticism, simply as it’s within the film enterprise and elsewhere. On Goodreads and Amazon, the e book presently has 4.5 stars out of 5, with most readers having an analogous response to that of Will Oremus in his evaluate for the Washington Put up. “Isaacson prioritized revealing anecdotes and behind-the-scenes reportage over a sophisticated critical lens,” he wrote in a mixed-to-positive discover.
Emanuel performs a component in two of the e book’s most eye-popping passages, a minimum of to readers of this web site. After Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion final yr, a interval of chaos ensued as 1000’s of staff had been lower free, together with the previous government administration staff. Amid doomsday predictions and damning accounts from insiders, Emanuel delivered a pitch to Musk, a longtime pal who for a time had a seat on the board of administrators of Endeavor Group Holdings. For a price of $100 million, Isaacson writes, Emanuel stated he and a gaggle from Endeavor, would run Twitter. The employed fingers would lower prices, restore relations with advertisers and overhaul the company tradition.
The response? Musk lieutenant Jared Birchall rapidly shot down the thought, in keeping with the e book, calling Emanuel’s outreach by way of the encrypted textual content service Sign ““the most insulting, demeaning, insane message.”
The opposite second occurred throughout Emanuel’s 2022 wedding ceremony to Sarah Staudinger in St. Tropez, France, Larry David officiated the nuptials, and Isaacson describes a scene through which David and Musk wound up seated subsequent to one another at a desk. Pleasantries weren’t exchanged; fairly, a sequence worthy of Curb Your Enthusiasm reportedly unfolded — minus the comedy.
“Do you want to murder kids in school?” David requested Musk, in keeping with Isaacson. The remark was referring to a mass capturing at an elementary faculty in Uvalde, TX, which killed 19 college students and two lecturers.
“His tweets about voting Republican because Democrats were the party of division and hate were sticking in my craw. Even if Uvalde never happened, I probably would have brought it up, because I was angry and offended,” David advised Isaacson.
