Walter Isaacson, left, and Michael Lewis are authors and friends from New Orleans. Their new books are about billionaire Elon Musk and fallen crypto executive Sam Bankman-Fried respectively.
Courtesy Simon & Schuster and W. W. Norton & Company
Imagine setting out to write a definitive book on someone you think is a visionary. Then your story’s hero transforms into a villain in much of the public’s opinion before you have finished your tome.
That just happened to two of the most prominent chroniclers of American life: Michael Lewis, who also wrote bestsellers Moneyball and The Big Short, and Walter Isaacson, biographer of Steve Jobs and Leonardo da Vinci.
Lewis spent two years with FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, once considered a golden boy of cryptocurrency, for Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon. It was released this month, on the first day of Bankman-Fried’s fraud trial.
Isaacson spent an equal amount of time — two years — with another tycoon, Elon Musk, as the Tesla and SpaceX CEO was turning his sights to Twitter. Musk has since bought the social media platform, fired most of its employees, used it to amplify conspiracy theories and renamed it X. Isaacson’s book came out in September.
These highlights were adapted from the full interview.
On their characters’ seeming indifference
Walter Isaacson: It was a bit of a surprise because I talked to [Musk] by phone and we talked about an hour and a half and I said, “I don’t want to do a book based on five or 10 or 15 interviews. I don’t want to do a conventional book like that. I want to be by your side for two years. And every meeting I want to be in…
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