ELON MUSK

From boy genius to man-child.

On Dec. 23, 2008, days before Tesla faced bankruptcy, NASA awarded Musk’s SpaceX a $1.6 billion contract. Borrowing money from SpaceX allowed the tech mogul to keep his car company afloat. “Thank you, Santa,” Musk tells Father Christmas in Cunningham’s graphic biography of the billionaire. Santa Claus’ reply: “Thank the US taxpayers. It’s their money.” This satirical exchange gets to the heart of Cunningham’s argument: that Musk, as talented as he might be, owes a lot of his success to the generosity of Uncle Sam—the same entity that Musk is now decimating, slashing budgets as head of the Department of Government Efficiency. Much of Cunningham’s book will be familiar to many readers; the British cartoonist credits numerous news articles and cites, among his sources, biographies by Walter Isaacson and Ashlee Vance. Nonetheless, to see Musk’s life story laid out so concisely, highlighted by striking details, makes for a vivid narrative. This is a powerful cartoon portrait of a cartoonish figure, an extraordinarily wealthy man with boyish traits: making fast cars, playing with rockets, smoking pot during a podcast interview, throwing fits, lashing out at strangers online, and jumping up and down at political rallies, his devotion to the American president prominently displayed on a baseball cap that he also wears to White House meetings. Cunningham doesn’t try to psychoanalyze his subject, but he does tell of this South African native’s embrace of far-right causes and “longtermism,” in which you “believe yourself to be a morally superior person” who focuses not on present-day human needs but on humanity’s future. And then there is Musk’s transgender child, who has disowned him—after which he railed against the “woke-mind virus” and how it will “destroy civilization.” Who’s to know where Musk’s tale will lead next? But this book gives readers a good starting point to track what has been a supremely improbable journey.

A rich account of the world’s wealthiest person.