14 books that inspired Elon Musk

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

When an Esquire journalist asked Elon Musk how he learned to build rockets, he gave a simple answer: "I read books." Find out what works helped the South African boy to become one of the most famous engineers and entrepreneurs of our time.

1. The Lord of the Rings by John R. R. Tolkien

Elon Musk was not popular at school. According to The New Yorker, Elon loved to brighten up his loneliness by reading fantasy and science fiction. These books, in particular The Lord of the Rings, shaped Musk's future worldview. “The heroes of the books that I read have always considered saving the world their duty,” Elon Musk said in the same article by The New Yorker.

2. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Musk admitted that at the age of 12-14 he was going through an existential crisis and buried himself in the literature of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and other philosophers in search of the meaning of life. Did not help. Later, Elon came across the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and the answer to "the main question of Life, the Universe and Everything Else" is the number 42. Then Musk realized that if you can correctly formulate the question, then it will not be difficult to give an answer. “The better we get to know the Universe, the more we understand what questions to ask,” Elon Musk summed up his impression of the book in an interview with Fresh Dialogues.

3. Benjamin Franklin. Biography ", Walter Isaacson

Benjamin Franklin is one of the heroes of Elon Musk. "Franklin is pretty cool," Musk says about one of America's founding fathers in an interview with the Foundation. Franklin was not only a politician, but also an entrepreneur who started his own business, an inventor. Unsurprisingly, a biography of such a person attracted the diversified Musk.

4. “Einstein. His Life and His Universe ", Walter Isaacson

In the same interview, Musk talks about another biography by Walter Isaacson, the biography of Albert Einstein. The book tells how one person with the help of his intellect and ambition can change the world and learn to read the thoughts of the Creator.

5. "Constructions, or Why Things Don't Break", James Gordon

Elon Musk is a self-taught self-taught person greedy for new knowledge. A book by American scientist James Gordon helped him learn the basics of structural design when he got the idea for SpaceX. In an interview with KCRW, Musk noted that Structures, or Why Things Don't Break, is an excellent guide for anyone planning to design technical developments.

6. Ignition !: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants, John Bates Clark

“Ignition! is a great book about rocket science, John Clark is really funny,”Elon Musk said in an interview. John Bates Clark is an American chemist who developed rocket fuel back in the 60s and 70s. The book tells about the history of rocketry, includes a description of technical experiments and their results, talks about the involvement of politicians in space science. It is difficult to find a paper edition of the book, but the Internet version in the original language is available to everyone.

7. “Artificial intelligence. Stages. Threats. Strategies ", Nick Bostrom

Elon Musk, as the creator of SpaceX and Tesla, can watch the development of technology from a bird's eye view. He sees negative aspects in progress. In August 2014, Musk tweeted: “I advise you to read the book by Nick Bostrom. We have to be extremely careful with artificial intelligence. It can be more dangerous than nuclear weapons. The Swedish philosopher in his book discusses what awaits civilization if artificial intelligence defeats the human mind.

8. “From zero to one. How to create a startup that will change the future”, Peter Thiel and Blake Masters

In the early 2000s, Elon Musk's competitor who launched the X.com payment system was Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal. Now Thiel's company is flourishing, and the businessman himself has become a billionaire investor. Elon Musk praised the former competitor's book. In a brief review, he stated: “Peter Thiel has launched many breakthrough projects. Zero to One tells how he did it."

9. Howard Hughes: His Life and Madness, Donald Barlett and James Steele

Howard Hughes is a filmmaker and aviation pioneer who set several world speed records and lost his mental health by the end of his life. Musk was also interested in his biography, which he mentioned in an interview with CNN. This is not surprising, because Elon Musk, like Howard Hughes, are individuals who have succeeded in several areas at once and strive to open up new horizons.

10. Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Orestes and Eric Conway

Researchers Naomi Orestes and Eric Conway state in their book that stakeholders - politicians and businessmen - were hiding facts about health care. Elon Musk tweeted: “I advise you to read Merchants of Doubt. The same people who yesterday denied the harm of smoking, today deny the planet's climate change."

11. Trilogy "Foundation" ("Foundation", "Academy"), Isaac Asimov

In part, Elon Musk's interest in space was sparked by science fiction he read as a child. Thus, in an interview with The Guardian, Musk confessed his love for the Fund trilogy: “These are the lessons of history, in which the cyclical development of civilizations is assumed. You can track the development of Babylon, Egypt, Rome, China. We are now at the peak of this cyclical curve, I would like to hope that it will be so. But maybe not. Events may occur that will lead to a decrease in this curve. Right now, for the first time in 4.5 billion years, humanity has escaped the boundaries of its planet. And we must act now while this window is open. There is no need to hope that this will last very long."

12. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein

A dystopian novel that tells about events in the near future. Criminals and political criminals have been exiled from Earth to artificial cities below the surface of the Moon. A group of revolutionary rebels are waging a war against earthly rulers. Elon Musk considers this novel to be the best work of Robert Heinlein.

13. Cycle "Culture", Ian Banks

The Culture books tell a story about a semi-anarchic future in which humanoids, aliens and artificial intelligence coexist. At the end of 2014, Musk tweeted: “I read Culture. It is a compelling picture of a grand, almost utopian galactic future. I hope things don't turn out too optimistic for artificial intelligence."

14. The Last Invention of Humanity by James Barratt

This article has repeatedly mentioned the negative attitude of the creator of SpaceX to artificial intelligence. It is not surprising that "The Last Invention of Mankind" was also included in the list of Elon Musk's must-reads.

In his book, James Barratt examines the potential future of artificial intelligence, identifies the advantages and disadvantages of its development, and talks about the serious danger of AI to humans, which Google, Apple and IBM are silent about.