Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson review – pillock, genius, or both?

It takes Walter Isaacson 688 pages to cram it all in - but cram it in he does.

Much of Musk ’s industrial success comes from his persistent attention to engineering detail.

He is a great believer in “vertical integration” making things yourself rather than outsourcing to others.

Isaacson seeks an explanation in his early childhood to being a very bright boy with undiagnosed Asperger ’s who was savagely bullied at school and had a sociopathic father, Errol .

Errol was “ a Jekyll-and-Hyde figure” who would regularly launch into “an hour or more of unrelenting abuse” directed at his young son who would “just have to stand there, not allowed to leave”.