E-book reviews: serial entrepreneur Elon Musk and blogger Tim Urban unravel some big ideas
Shocking case study of eugenics in the US and Shirley Maclaine’s kooky memoir round out this week’s non-fiction e-book and audiobook selections
by Tim Urban
Wait But Why (e-book)
3 stars
Readers will have heard of Elon Musk, but maybe not Wait But Why. So this e-book is a good introduction to the “world’s most remarkable living entrepreneur” (as TED Talks’ Chris Anderson dubbed Musk) and the blog-cum-website, about everything from “How to pick a life partner” to “7 Ways to be Insufferable on Facebook” to “The Elon Musk Series”, which is repackaged into this offering. Readers who thought the Dummies book series was brilliant will probably love WBW, which is cuter and more personal, although others might wonder whether sentences such as this, about atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperatures, are necessary: “No one is more of a dick than Venus [where the average temperature is 462 degrees Celsius].” Tim Urban, one half of WBW, states that though Musk was the prompt for the WBW blogs that became the book, he did not pay for, or vet, the writing. The man behind PayPal, Tesla Motors electric cars, SpaceX (their fourth rocket launch, last year, was a success) and more, approached Urban because he was tired about stories about him when more people, he thought, should be reading about fossil-fuel supply, battery advancements or why humanity should be multi-planetary. This book allows the earthbound to dream.
by Adam Cohen