Elon Musk’s 12 books to read for business and personal success – fantasies, biographies and rocket science
- The CEO of SpaceX and Tesla’s best reads range from The Lord of the Rings to the dangers of AI to the life of physicist Albert Einstein
- Unsurprisingly, he is also a fan of complex how-to guides to building rockets
Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, Tesla and other larger-than-life technology companies, somehow also seems to find time to read. Musk has said that reading a variety of books – from epic works of fantasy like The Lord of the Rings trilogy to complex how-to guides to building rockets – is crucial to his success.
We looked through Musk’s past interviews and social media history to come up with this list of 12 books the billionaire entrepreneur thinks everyone should read.
1. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Musk had a nickname when he was a wimpy, smart-mouthed kid growing up in South Africa: Muskrat. The New Yorker reported in 2009 that “in his loneliness, he read a lot of fantasy and science fiction”.
Those books – notably The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien – shaped Musk’s vision of his future self.
“The heroes of the books I read … always felt a duty to save the world,” he told The New Yorker. For those who’ve already read the books and seen the movies but are still hurting for more Middle Earth, Amazon is working on a Lord of the Rings TV series.