What the Elon Musk biography revealed about his tumultuous Twitter takeover

From alarming questions about Elon Musk’s role in Ukraine’s war effort, to new details about his complicated personal life, there has been no shortage of bombshells from Walter Isaacson’s recently released biography of Elon Musk.

The book covers his childhood in South Africa, as well as his business dealings, from his first startup to Tesla, SpaceX and Neuralink. Perhaps unsurprisingly, more than a quarter of the book is devoted to Twitter.

Isaacson spent two years with Musk and thus had a front-row seat to his takeover of Twitter, beginning with his move to become a major stakeholder last spring. While much of the drama that unfolded at Twitter (now, X) over the last year and half has been well-documented, Isaacson’s account adds telling — and at times bizarre — new details about how it all went down.

Musk almost immediately regretted his decision to buy Twitter

Isaacson describes Musk’s initial bid to buy Twitter as impulsive — the result of one of his frequent “manic” moods. And he writes that Musk regretted the plan almost immediately after the deal was put in motion — both because he thought he was overpaying, and because he was so unimpressed …read more