Elon Musk.

First edition of this authorized biography of the world's most consequential and controversial entrepreneur. Octavo, original publisher's boards, pictorial endpapers, illustrated throughout. Boldly signed by Walter Isaacson and Elon Musk on the half-title page. The Musk signature was obtained at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. Fine in a fine dust jacket. Front jacket photograph by American celebrity, portrait, and advertising photographer Art Streiber.   Elon Reeve Musk (born 1971) is a South African-born American entrepreneur, engineer, and investor whose simultaneous leadership of multiple transformative technology enterprises has made him arguably the most consequential and controversial business figure of the early twenty-first century, and the wealthiest individual in recorded history. After co-founding the online financial services company Zip2 and subsequently PayPal, whose sale to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion provided the capital for his subsequent ventures, Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with the stated goal of making humanity a multiplanetary species, and Tesla in 2003 to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy, two enterprises whose combined market valuations and technological achievements have no precedent in the history of private enterprise. SpaceX became the first private company to send astronauts to the International Space Station, developed the world's most powerful operational rocket in the Starship program, and through its Starlink satellite constellation built the world's largest broadband network, while Tesla transformed the global automotive industry and became the most valuable car manufacturer in history by market capitalization. Musk also founded Neuralink to develop brain-computer interface technology, the Boring Company to develop tunnel-based transportation systems, and xAI to compete with OpenAI in the field of artificial intelligence, having previously co-founded OpenAI before departing its board. His 2022 acquisition of Twitter, subsequently rebranded as X, for $44 billion drew international attention and controversy, as did his increasingly prominent and polarizing role in American and global politics. A figure who simultaneously inspires reverence and fierce criticism in roughly equal measure, Musk has been described by Walter Isaacson as a man whose demons drive him and whose boundless ambition has carried humanity to the edge of possibilities that no previous generation could have imagined.