Elon Musk already has one official biography, Ashlee Vance's 2015 "Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future". The entrepreneur has done much since then and says a second biography is coming. This time it's being penned by Walter Isaacson.
"If you're curious about Tesla, SpaceX and my general goings on, Walter Isaacson is writing a biography," Musk tweeted on Wednesday. The tweet has amassed over 40,000 likes in an hour, so the market certainly seems ripe.
Fox Business previously reported that Isaacson had been in talks with Musk about a potential biography, but as late as June had yet to make a final decision.
Isaacson is a biographer of American creators, and famously wrote Jobs, an official biography on Apple founder Steve Jobs. That book, released in 2011 just 19 days after Jobs' death, would go on to be the basis for the 2015 film Steve Jobs. (The Michael Fassbender one, not the Ashton Kutcher one.)
If you’re curious about Tesla, SpaceX & my general goings on, @WalterIsaacson is writing a biography
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 5, 2021
Isaacson has previously written biographies on Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin and most recently on Jennifer Doudna, who pioneered CRISPR gene editing.
The 2015 biography written by Vance, for which Musk gave several interviews, documented his life through to 2014. That was before Tesla became the most valuable car company on the planet and before SpaceX became the first private company to send humans into orbit (among many other achievements). It was notably also before Musk became the Dogefather.