My last read, or actually listened in audio, book about Elon Musk, by Ashlee Vance.

Since many writers and journalists have wished to write such a book, but received rejection from Elon Musk to the request of  helping them by doing that, so this author also initially got a "no" for the answer. However, after several refusals, while knowing several former employees and acquaintances of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, he still decided to collect materials and start writing the book, and when he had already made series of interviews and nearly 200 people already were part of it, Elon Musk contacted him and he was willing to help, if he could read the book and make improvements before it would be  published. But the writer could not afford a probably 45-page footnote, that would have left an impression of Musk as a control freak and would have put the writers own journalistic competence under question. Eventually, however, Musk agreed, because he probably liked the writer's perseverance. For the first time, Musk had agreed to allow a journalist to enter in his world, allowing access to the managers, friends and family as well as to his businesses. So they met once a month for dinner until the book was ready.

The study had to start at SpaceX headquarter in California, a few miles from Los Angeles Airport. This is, where the visitors find two large posters of Mars - the first of them is a cold and barren red giant, and another is a large green land surrounded by oceans, warmed up and transformed into a habitat, suitable for human settlement. This is, what Musk wants to achieve in the future.
When the writer met Elon Musk at some Silicon Valley event, his conversations sounded  pretentious and vigorous like they were taken from a technical-utopic play. But in 2012, the cynics like the writer were forced to notice the achievements of Musk - SpaceX had flown a capsule with the equipment to the international space station and safely back to the ground. And Tesla Motors got ready an electric sedan. In addition, he was the superior and largest shareholder of SolarCity, a fast growing company, that used solar energy.

The writer has named SpaceX`s main building Muskland. It is located in a poor and depressing area of LA, is a rectangle of about 5 hectares, painted white to denote the "Unity of Body, Soul and Mind", and it is a real rocket factory, where several rockets are built at the same time and all from zero to get the latest and more innovative results. This is only the first building in Muscland. SpaceX had acquired several buildings, that had once belonged to Boeing. In one of these buildings with an arched roof, which looks like an aircraft hangar, Tesla's research, development and design studio is located. Tesla has set up one of its battery charging centers on the outdoor parking lot, where LA-s owners of  electric cars can charge their cars for free.

Elon Musk as a man is 185 cm tall, but leaves a much taller impression, because of his wide shoulders. When he arrived at the meeting with the author, he was modest and rather kept a low profile, seaming even shy. As a person, he is self-confident, but does not immediately leave such an impression due to his insecure speech manner, often getting stuck the way engineers and physics do, searching for exact wording, sometimes entering in an esoteric and scientific burrow, as the writer says, with no way out, without offering the slightest help or a simplified version. Musk just thinks you can keep up with him. Communication with Musk is very pleasant, he often makes jokes, he is charming, but never keeps on with empty conversations.

While most of the big managers have around a number of clerks everywhere, then Musk moves around in his Muskland allone, running through workstations, where employees rush to share information with him.

As he 1995 freshly graduated from college, as many others, Elon Musk stepped directly into the dot-com mania and set up a company called Zip2, something between Google Maps and Yelp. This first attempt was a quick success. 1999 Compaq bought Zip2 for $ 307 millions. Musk earned 22 millions from the deal and invested almost all in a new start-up company, known as PayPal, which made him fantastically ridge as he, being the largest shareholder of PayPal, when eBay acquired it for $ 1.5 billion in 2002. Immediately thereafter, instead of waiting for the next big thing to come, as recommended by the usual custom of the time, he placed 100 millions to SpaceX projects, 70 millions to Tesla, and 30 millions to SolarCity, where he produced extremely complex products, possibly from zero, in the world's two most expensive cities - Los Angeles and Silicon Valley.

With SpaceX, Musk was competing with the entire US military-industrial complex, as well as with Russia and China. SpaceX has made its name as a cheap supplier of the branch of industry. SpaceX has experimented with reusable missiles, that can bring equipment to space and get back to the starting point, which would also bring people into space. It has caused him many enemies. Musk has said, his family is afraid, that the russians will kill him.

With Tesla Motors, Musk has built a global fuel distribution network in the US, Europe and Asia, with many Tesla charging stations running on solar power, and where cars can be fully charged in 20 minutes. Tesla owners can do it for free. Also, cars do not require much after-sales service such as oil change and things like that.

With SolarCity Musk has become the largest installer and financier of solar panels, being the chairman of the company, while his cousins are involved in daily management of the company. SolarCity has been able to lower the cost of many services and reduce expenses, becoming a large service provider.

At a time, when clean technology entrepreneurs have gone bankrupt with scary regularity, Musk has created the two most successful ones. It all made him one of the richest men in the world with a net worth of $ 10 billions.

While Mark Zuckerberg is trying to help you share cute baby photos, Musk is trying to save humanity from self-induced or accidental extinction, symbolized by the above-mentioned images of Mars.