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Matt Cooper: The many faces of Elon Musk

Walter Isaacson had unprecedented access to the troubled tech entrepreneur and world’s richest man and the author’s telling tome ultimately reveals a Jekyll and Hyde character

Elon Musk: his biographer Walter Isaacson says Musk has multiple personalities: ‘There's a lot of psychological things jangling in there’

Walter Isaacson set the highest of bars for biographies with his 2011 masterpiece study of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple. His newest work, the life of Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has not gained as many of the glowing reviews as that previous book, some critics suggesting that Isaacson perhaps was somewhat soft in forgiving many examples of Musk’s often appalling behaviour, justifying it because of extraordinary results.

Isaacson, given extraordinary access to ...