Walter Isaacson’s latest biography, “Elon Musk,” is a full-throttle voyage into the mind of the maverick who didn’t just reach for the stars — he built a Starship to get there.

Isaacson offers an encyclopedic and captivating journey into the life and times of one of the most audacious moguls in the world of science, technology and innovation. Through scrupulous research, interviews and close access to Musk himself, Isaacson paints a lucid portrait of a man who continues to revolutionize multiple industries and remains a prominent figure in leading humanity into the new frontier.

“Elon Musk” is a 688-page behemoth of a biography packed with 95 brisk chapters, chronologically structured around the author’s interviews with those close to the Musk orbit. The book includes a dazzling array of pictures seen and unseen, mostly from Maye Musk’s personal family collection.

The book begins with Musk’s upbringing and early years in Pretoria, South Africa, shedding light on the violence and adversity that shaped his character and relentless pursuit to find the meaning of life. Born to Maye Haldeman and Errol Musk, Elon’s estranged father, as emphasized by Isaacson, emerges as the bedevelling antagonist in Elon’s story.

Isaacson paints Errol as a dark and fanciful human with a “Jekyll and Hyde” alter ego he passed on to Elon. The portrayal of Errol is a cautionary tale, one Isaacson mythologizes across the book, and as Maye Musk warns, “he might become his father.” Conversely, Elon also inherits his fathers acumen for engineering, and in 1984, at the age of 12, received $500 for a video game he coded called Blastar.

Influenced by a family of adventurers, Elon grew up with a combination of interests in strategy games, esoteric history and science fiction. This complex background contributed to his force of nature persona and gave Elon the passion responsible for the groundbreaking inventions and unstoppable work ethic he still has to this day.

Isaacson provides an outspoken and unvarnished portrayal of Elon, showing both his genius and imperfections. Isaacson, having spent the better part of the last two years with Elon, observed his ability to shift between multiple personalities at the blink of an eye: demon mode, video game mode, engineering mode and goofball meme lord mode — the latter of which the world now knows all too well.

As for “demon mode” — the worst of his father’s inheritance — as much as it has strained his relationships with colleagues and loved ones, Claire Boucher (aka Grimes, and mother of three of his children) confesses, “Demon mode causes a lot of chaos, but it also gets shit done.”

“To anyone I’ve offended. I just want to say, I reinvented electric cars, and I’m sending people to Mars in a rocket ship. Did you think I was also going to be a chill, normal dude?” said Elon when he hosted Saturday Night Live in 2021.

One of the book’s greatest strengths is its exploration of Elon’s professional journey, from his time as an undergrad at the University of Pennsylvania to creating and selling two companies during the internet wave (Zip2 and X.com, which later merged with Peter Theil’s PayPal). Elon walked away from Palo Alto with a fortune as he embarked on his life’s ultimate mission: “to make mankind a multiplanetary civilization.”

The rollercoaster ride of his climb from Canadian tech bro to American business magnate is reported in remarkable depth. From the inception of SpaceX to the vision of Neuralink, readers gain insight into the challenges and triumphs of working in the tech industry and the evolution of Elon’s complicated career and personal life.

The book does not shy away from addressing Elon’s personal struggles and failures. Often mistaken for hubris and petulance, in 2021 Elon joked on television that he did indeed have Asperger’s syndrome — a condition heightened by his childhood trauma — that affects his social skills and emotional connectivity with humans.

Isaacson reports that Elon’s parents were “drawn to dramatic intensity rather than domestic bliss,” a trait they would pass on to their son and attract him to toxic relationships. A chapter titled “Rocky Relationships” documents a short but furious fling with actress Amber Heard after divorcing his second wife Talulah and before meeting his last partner, Grimes.

Another chapter designated “Father’s Day” reveals that in 2022, Grimes and Elon welcomed a secret third child, named Techno Mechanicus.

What makes “Elon Musk” hard to put down is Isaacson’s exclusive exposure to almost everyone in close proximity to Elon. Over the course of two years, Isaacson gains access to interviews with all three of the women Elon ultimately has a total of eleven children with — Elon tweets May of 2022, “Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis. A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far.”

Throughout “Elon Musk,” Isaacson pays close attention to the philosophy, ethos and principles that guide Elon throughout his career. Elon, an obsessed problem-solver who thrives on tension, employs his “Algorithm” among his multithreaded workforce: question every requirement, delete any part of the process you can, simplify and optimize, accelerate cycle time and automate.

The book also delves into Elon’s cultural role as an edgelord and visionary. For most, the night sky of infinity is seen is an afterthought, but for Elon, “faring to other planets would be one of the significant advances in the story of humanity” (among others, such as a future with artificial general intelligence, sustainable energy and advanced human-machine symbiosis interfaces).

Isaacson’s biographies are examinations into the origins of genius. Where this one shines is his ability to uncover Elon’s mission of safeguarding the future of human existence — an immense undertaking — consistently underpinning the ambitions and drive of the current CEO of six prominent enterprises that champion his vision for the cosmos: SpaceX and Starlink, Tesla, Twitter (now X Corp.), Neuralink, The Boring Company and xAI.

This biography is a must-read for anyone interested in going to Mars, working for one of Elon’s six companies, driving a Tesla, using X or just genuinely curious about the behind the scenes of the richest man on planet Earth.

Elon Musk’s endeavors continue to shape the world, and this book offers valuable insights into the man who just may be crazy enough to get us to Mars; yet, the closer Elon gets to completing his divine mission, the further away he’s alienated from mankind itself.