From the author of Steve Jobs and other bestselling biographies, this is the astonishingly intimate story of Elon Musk, the most fascinating and controversial innovator of our era—a rule-breaking visionary who helped to lead the world into the era of electric vehicles, private space exploration, and artificial intelligence. Oh, and took over Twitter.

When Elon Musk was a kid in South Africa, he was regularly beaten by bullies. One day a group pushed him down some concrete steps and kicked him until his face was a swollen ball of flesh. He was in the hospital for a week. But the physical scars were minor compared to the emotional ones inflicted by his father, an engineer, rogue, and charismatic fantasist. His father’s impact on his psyche would linger. He developed into a tough yet vulnerable man-child, prone to abrupt Jekyll-and-Hyde mood swings, with an exceedingly high tolerance for risk, a craving for drama, an epic sense of mission, and a maniacal intensity that was callous and at times destructive.

At the beginning of 2022—after a year marked by SpaceX launching thirty-one rockets into orbit, Tesla selling a million cars, and him becoming the richest man on earth—Musk spoke ruefully about his compulsion to stir up dramas. “I need to shift my mindset away from being in crisis mode, which it has been for about fourteen years now, or arguably most of my life,” he said. It was a wistful comment, not a New Year’s resolution. Even as he said it, he was secretly buying up shares of Twitter, the world’s ultimate playground. Over the years, whenever he was in a dark place, his mind went back to being bullied on the playground. Now he had the chance to own the playground.

For two years, Isaacson shadowed Musk, attended his meetings, walked his factories with him, and spent hours interviewing him, his family, friends, coworkers, and adversaries. The result is the revealing inside story, filled with amazing tales of triumphs and turmoil, that addresses the question: are the demons that drive Musk also what it takes to drive innovation and progress?

Beyond Sound: The College and Career Guide in Music Technology is a must-read for anyone who loves music technology and wants to build a career in this competitive, fast-paced and exciting world. It is an outstanding resource for college and high school students, high school career centers, university placement centers, and libraries. Beyond Sound reflects on major technological advancements in recent history and explains why now is the ideal time to start a music technology career. An in-depth consideration of music technology education looks at over 200 schools that offer Music Technology, Music Recording, Music Industry, and Music Business programs. Beyond Sound considers the differences between BM, BS, BA, and BFA degrees as well as Graduate School, Trade School, and Art school programs. The reader is given the tools to research and make informed decisions about where to go to pursue their own formal music technology education. Beyond Sound provides practical guidance on career preparation, including how to get a great internship, how to land that first job, and how to make connections and move up in the business. Music technology jobs in recording, live sound, television and film, digital media, video games, retail sales, and education are described in great depth and clarity. Successful professionals in each of these fields share their stories, experiences, advice, and suggestions in candid interviews that provide the reader with a rare glimpse inside the professional world of music technology. Author Scott L. Phillips draws on his seventeen-year career as a technology trainer and educator, his scholarly research of music technology programs, and his extensive network of music technology professionals to bring the reader an intimate and accurate view of the exciting world of music technology. With this book, the aspiring music technologist will be able to learn about, prepare for, and begin a successful career that goes far Beyond Sound.

On Listening is a unique collection of forty multi-disciplinary perspectives drawn from anthropology, bioacoustics, geography, literature, community activism, sociology, religion, philosophy, art history, conflict mediation and the sonic arts including music, ethnomusicology and field recording. These specially commissioned contributions explore the many ways in which skilled listening can mediate new relationships with our physical environment and the people and other species that we share it with. From the Introduction: Listening has become an increasingly popular subject of study. It features in conferences, in academic journals, in doctoral research projects. However, reflexive listening is an applied practice that exceeds the boundaries of academic institutions to take its place in a number of everyday settings. This book aims to connect the scholarly and the experiential and extend the contemporary discourse on listening.

Metrology is part of the essential but largely hidden infrastructure of the modern world. This book concentrates on the infrastructure aspects of metrology. It introduces the underlying concepts: International system of units, traceability and uncertainty; and describes the concepts that are implemented to assure the comparability, reliability and quantifiable trust of measurement results. It is shown what benefits the traditional metrological principles have in fields as medicine or in the evaluation of cyber physical systems.

The field of Sound Studies has changed and developed dramatically over the last two decades involving a vast and dizzying array of work produced by those working in the arts, social sciences and sciences. The study of sound is inherently interdisciplinary and is undertaken both by those who specialize in sound and by others who wish to include sound as an intrinsic and indispensable element in their research. This is the first resource to provide a wide ranging, cross-cultural and interdisciplinary investigation and analysis of the ways in which researchers use a broad range of methodologies in order to pursue their sonic investigations. It brings together 49 specially commissioned chapters that ask a wide range of questions including; how can sound be used in current academic disciplines? Is sound as a methodological tool indispensable for Sound Studies and what can sound artists contribute to the discourse on methodology in Sound Studies? The editors also present 3 original chapters that work as provocative ‘sonic methodological interventions’ prefacing the 3 sections of the book.

In a complex and changing world, current scientific approaches to problem solving have drastically evolved to include complexity models and emerging systems. Breaking problems into the smallest component and examining its position inside a system allows for a more regulated and measured technique in investigation, discovery, and providing solutions. Systems Research for Real-World Challenges is an essential reference source that explores the development of systems philosophy, theory, practice, its models, concepts, and methodologies developed as an aid for improving decision making and problem solving for the benefit of organizations and society as a whole. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as complexity models, management systems, and economic policy, this book is ideally designed for scientists, policy makers, researchers, managers, and systematists seeking current research on the benefits and approaches of problem solving within the realm of systems thinking and practice.

Polymers in Organic Electronics: Polymer Selection for Electronic, Mechatronic, and Optoelectronic Systems provides readers with vital data, guidelines, and techniques for optimally designing organic electronic systems using novel polymers. The book classifies polymer families, types, complexes, composites, nanocomposites, compounds, and small molecules while also providing an introduction to the fundamental principles of polymers and electronics. Features information on concepts and optimized types of electronics and a classification system of electronic polymers, including piezoelectric and pyroelectric, optoelectronic, mechatronic, organic electronic complexes, and more. The book is designed to help readers select the optimized material for structuring their organic electronic system. Chapters discuss the most common properties of electronic polymers, methods of optimization, and polymeric-structured printed circuit boards. The polymeric structures of optoelectronics and photonics are covered and the book concludes with a chapter emphasizing the importance of polymeric structures for packaging of electronic devices.

Corrosion is a high-cost and potentially hazardous issue in numerous industries. The potential use of diverse carbon nanoallotropes in corrosion protection, prevention and control is a subject of rising attention. This book covers the current advancements of carbon nanoallotropes in metal corrosion management, including the usage of nanostructure materials to produce high-performance corrosion inhibitors and corrosion-resistant coatings.