Shawn McCreesh of New York Magazine got the inside story on how Walter Isaacson came to write Elon Musk's hagiography.
His courtship of Musk began in August 2021. Isaacson was in Sag Harbor, staying at the home of his high-powered lawyer friends Joel Klein and Nicole Seligman, when Musk called. Antonio Gracias, who sat on the boards of both Aspen and Tesla, had set it up.
At the time, Musk was more an engineer with a halo than the controversialist he has since become. Thanks to the success of Tesla and SpaceX, he was the richest person in the world, and Time magazine — now something of a hobby project owned by a software billionaire — picked him as its 2021 Person of the Year. ("This is the man who aspires to save our planet and get us a new one to inhabit.")
Musk thought it might be a good moment to do a book and wondered if Isaacson would want to write it. Notably, on Amazon, four of Isaacson's works — Franklin, Einstein, Jobs and da Vinci — are packaged and sold as a set: "The Genius Biographies." Why wouldn't Musk want to join the others on that shelf?
The article says that just 20 minutes after their call ended, Musk tweeted that Isaacson was writing his biography, surprising the author.
[Thanks RC!]
