Books Recommended by Elon Musk
Born in South Africa, Elon Musk moved to Canada and in 1992 to the United States. After getting a PhD in applied physics and materials science at Stanford University, he founded his first business, a web software company, in 1995 with his brother.
The company, Zip2, was acquired by Compaq in 1999 and Musk’s share in that deal was $22 million. With $10 million of that money, he went on to co-found X.com, a company that later merged with Confinity, whose product was a money transfer service called PayPal. Even though he was replaced as CEO in 2000, he was the largest shareholder and when PayPal was acquired by eBay in 2002, his paycheck was $165 million.
Again, he didn’t sleep on that money and followed his passion for physics and his dream of changing the world and founded two companies whose purpose was to revolutionize the way people travel (both on and off this planet). These two companies are SpaceX and Tesla.
SpaceX became the world’s largest private producer of rocket engines and Musk’s vision in developing the company was heavily influenced by Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. The company’s goal is to reduce the cost of human spaceflight ten times and also to help achieve Musk’s dream of a human colony on Mars by 2040. During a talk at SXSW, Musk actually stated that he’d like to die on Mars, “just not on impact”.
As for Tesla, the company was founded in 2003 and Musk joined the team a year later as the controlling investor and chairman. Tesla was created as an electric car company, and by 2017 it was also producing energy storage solutions and solar panels. One of its products, the Tesla Model S car was the world’s best selling plug-in electric car in 2015 and 2016.
Other companies founded by Elon Musk include SolarCity (provider of solar power systems, later acquired by Tesla), Hyperloop (a high-speed transportation system), OpenAI (founded as a not-for-profit artificial intelligence research company), Neuralink (whose purpose is to integrate artificial intelligence with the human brain) and The Boring Company (produces tunnel boring machines).
How did Elon Musk manage to do all that? Well, one thing he always mentions is books. And we’re not talking just about business books, it’s like the Elon Musk books. Ever since childhood, he has been an avid reader and attributes a large part of his success to reading. There are also a few books written about him, the most popular one being Ashlee Vance’s Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future.
Also, there are two collections of books curated by the best entrepreneurs in the world here:
- Best Business Biographies
- Best Books About Resilience and Building Mental Strength
- Best Leadership Books
Books recommended by Elon Musk:
Reading lists by year: 2024
26 books recommended by Elon Musk
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
Peter Thiel has built multiple breakthrough companies, and Zero to One shows how.
The Foundation
by Isaac Asimov
In terms of sci-fi books, I think Isaac Asimov is really great. I like the Foundation series, probably one of the all-time best.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
I guess when I was around 12 or 15... I had an existential crisis, and I was reading various books on trying to figure out the meaning of life and what does it all mean? It all seemed quite meaningless and then we happened to… Read the full quote
I guess when I was around 12 or 15... I had an existential crisis, and I was reading various books on trying to figure out the meaning of life and what does it all mean? It all seemed quite meaningless and then we happened to have some books by Nietzsche and Schopenhauer in the house, which you should not read at age 14 (laughter). It is bad, it’s really negative. So then I read Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy which is quite positive I think and it highlighted an important point which is that a lot of times the question is harder than the answer. And if you can properly phrase the question, then the answer is the easy part. So, to the degree that we can better understand the universe, then we can better know what questions to ask. Then whatever the question is that most approximates: what’s the meaning of life? That’s the question we can ultimately get closer to understanding. And so I thought to the degree that we can expand the scope and scale of consciousness and knowledge, then that would be a good thing.
The Lord of the Rings
As a boy in Pretoria, Musk was un dersized and picked upon, a smart-aleck known as Muskrat. In his loneliness, he read a lot of fantasy and science fiction. “The heroes of the books I read, ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and the ‘Foundation’ series, always felt a duty to save the world,” he told me.
The New Digital Age: Transforming Nations, Businesses, and Our Lives
Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen’s thoughtful, well-researched work elucidates the staggering impact of technology on our daily lives, as well as what surprising and incredible developments the future may hold. Readers might be left with more questions than answers, but that’s the idea—we are at our best when we ask ‘What’s next?’
Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
by Nick Bostrom
Worth reading Superintelligence by Bostrom. We need to be super careful with AI. Potentially more dangerous than nukes.
Deep Learning
by Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio, Aaron Courville
Written by three experts in the field, Deep Learning is the only comprehensive book on the subject.
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
I didn't read actually very many general business books, but I like biographies and autobiographies, I think those are pretty helpful. Actually, a lot of them aren't really business. [...] Isaacson's biography on Franklin is really good. Cause he was an entrepreneur and he sort… Read the full quote
I didn't read actually very many general business books, but I like biographies and autobiographies, I think those are pretty helpful. Actually, a lot of them aren't really business. [...] Isaacson's biography on Franklin is really good. Cause he was an entrepreneur and he sort of started from nothing, actually he was just like a run away kid, basically, and created his printing business and sort of his way of doing that, and then over time all of the science and politics. I'd say certain he's one of the few people I most admire. Franklin's pretty awesome.
Howard Hughes: His Life and Madness
by Donald L. Barlett, James B. Steele
Musk said that he had just finished Barlett and Steele's
If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens WHERE IS EVERYBODY?: Fifty Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life
by Stephen Webb
Great book. Read it when it came out.
Ignition!: An informal history of liquid rocket propellants
There is a good book on rocket stuff called Ignition! [An informal history of liquid rocket propellants] by John Clark, that’s a really fun one.
Merchants of Doubt
by Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway
I recommend people read a book called Merchants of Doubt. All they need to do is create doubt.
Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era
by James Barrat
While on the subject of AI risk, Our Final Invention by @jrbarrat is also worth reading
Structures: Or Why Things Don’t Fall Down
by J.E. Gordon
It is really, really good if you want a primer on structural design.
The Culture
SpaceX, the rocketry firm he founded in 2002, owns two ocean-going barges that serve as mobile landing pads for its rockets. One is called Just Read the Instructions, the other Of Course I Still Love You. Both are named after sentient spaceships in the “Culture”… Read the full quote
SpaceX, the rocketry firm he founded in 2002, owns two ocean-going barges that serve as mobile landing pads for its rockets. One is called Just Read the Instructions, the other Of Course I Still Love You. Both are named after sentient spaceships in the “Culture” books, all of which have similarly playful names (one warship, which spends most of its time waiting idly to be called up for action, is called the Killing Time.)
The Story of Civilization
The first one on the list will take a while to get through, but is very much worthwhile.
