Insane Mode

October 1, 2018
As a brilliant engineer, businessman, and visionary, juggling multiple projects from managing his electric-car company to spearheading a Mars mission, Elon Musk has built a reputation in the popular media every bit as colorful as the one Thomas Edison enjoyed in his day, and increasingly controversial. Although profiles of the inventor have already been published, this one comes from a former Tesla Motors writer who aims the spotlight less on Musk himself and more on his innovative, long-term strategy for supplanting gasoline-powered transportation. As Tesla Model S owners are aware, insane mode is a button on the dash that rapidly boosts the vehicle's acceleration in mere seconds, and it's also a metaphor McKenzie uses here to show how Musk rewrote the rule book for auto manufacturing. In a dozen chapters with creative titles such as Go Ahead, Start a Car Company and Electric Avenue, McKenzie follows Musk's path from convincing investors that electric-only vehicles could sell to designing a groundbreaking factory. A must-read for everyone interested in cars, entrepreneurship, alternative energy, and deeper insights into out-of-the-box thinking, working, and living.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2018

A former tech reporter and now cofounder of the subscription publishing start-up Substack, McKenzie shows how Elon Musk (in insane leadership mode) has been building the electronic vehicle/solar panel company Tesla, which balances on a knife's edge between financial crash and visionary, world-changing, environmentally sound success.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.