I’ve passed the house of Mrs. RevereOften enough when her windows were openTo know she’d rather listen to SchubertMost evenings than watch whatever the networksAre beaming into her neighbors’ homes.Now that she’s lived, as I have, far longerThan twice Schubert’s 31 years,I wonder if she’d be willing, as I tell myselfI would be, to subtract some of the time still left herIf it could be carried back to his eraAnd added to his scant sum. My guessIs she’d gladly donate a year, without any prodding,While a month might be my best effort.Not a grand gesture, but still not nothing:To fall asleep at the end of a balmy JuneAnd wake next morning on the first of August,Allowing Schubert to develop some themesHe barely had time to sketch. And I hope I’d promiseTo give Mrs. Revere a week now and thenTo help her recruit more donors to our project.We’d belong to a band whose membersWould be entitled to see themselves as patronsAs well as clients, benefactors as wellAs recipients, joined in a secret fellowshipWe’d acknowledge by signs when we passed on the street.And whenever I wished that Schubert might guessThe role we played in lengthening his careerAnd dedicate one of his extra pieces to us,She’d say the last thing she wanted was musicThat sounded in any way beholden.And I might reply by asking why deny himThe pleasure of knowing how much he matteredTo people he’d never meet. A smile from him,And then he’d turn back to making something timelessFrom something destined to pass away.

This article was originally published by Hakai Magazine.To see a great white shark breach the waves, its powerful jaws clasping a shock-struck seal, is to see the very pinnacle of predatory prowess. Or so we thought. Several years ago, in South Africa, the world was reminded that even great white sharks have something to fear: killer whales.Long before they started chomping on yachts, killer whales were making headlines for a rash of attacks on South African great white sharks. The killings were as gruesome as they were impressive. The killer whales were showing a deliberate sense of culinary preference, consuming the sharks’ oily, nutrient-rich livers but leaving the rest of the shark to sink or wash up on a nearby beach.After the initial news of the attacks, the situation only got weirder. Great white sharks started disappearing from some of their best-known habitats around South Africa’s False Bay and Gansbaai regions, in the country’s southwest.[Read: Killer whales are not our friends]“The decline of white sharks was so dramatic, so fast, so unheard-of that lots of theories began to circulate,” says Michelle Jewell, an ecologist at the Michigan State University Museum. In the absence of explanation, pet theories abounded. Some proposed that overfishing of the sharks’ prey to feed Australia’s fish-and-chips market led to the sharks’ decline, although some scientists were critical of that idea. Others thought the disappearance was directly caused by the killer whales. Perhaps they were killing all of the sharks?“Any time you see large population declines in local areas, it’s cause for conservation concern,” says Heather Bowlby, a shark expert with Fisheries and Oceans Canada. “In a place where animals used to be seen very regularly, and suddenly they’re not there anymore, some were concerned that they all died.”Now, though, scientists know a bit more about what happened. In a recent paper, Bowlby and her colleagues argue that the sharks’ disappearance was caused by the killer whales. But the sharks aren’t dead. They just moved. Across South Africa, the scientists found, the white-shark population has undergone a pronounced eastward shift.To Jewell, who wasn’t involved in the research, this makes sense. “We know that predators have a huge influence on the movement and habitat use of their prey, so this isn’t really surprising,” she says. “The issue is that lots of people weren’t used to thinking of great white sharks as prey.”[Read: Why so many sharks have bird feathers in their bellies]Alison Kock, a marine biologist with South African National Parks and a co-author of the study, says researchers cracked the mystery after reports of white-shark sightings started flowing in from sites farther east y. “As False Bay and Gansbaai had major declines, other places reported huge increases in white-shark populations,” she says. “Too rapid to be related to reproduction, since they don’t reproduce that fast.”“It had to be redistribution,” she says, adding: “The white sharks moved east.” Places like Algoa Bay had seen great white sharks before, but not anywhere near this many.In the white sharks’ absence, South Africa’s west coast is changing. New species like bronze whalers and seven-gill sharks have moved into False Bay. For the tour operators who ran shark dives in the area, however, the shift has been difficult. Some have survived by switching to offering kelp-forest dives—driven in part by the popularity of the documentary My Octopus Teacher. Many, though, have gone under.But what of the great white sharks’ new home farther east? No one quite knows how these regions are adapting to a sudden influx of apex predators, but scientists expect some significant ecological changes. They’re also warning of the potential for more shark bites, because people living in the white sharks’ new homes are not as used to shark-human interactions.We may never know exactly how many white sharks died in killer-whale attacks. The prized and presumably tasty livers targeted by the killer whales help white sharks float, which means many dead white sharks may have sunk uncounted. Overall, though, Kock is glad to see the mystery solved.“This has been very worrying for me, and it was good to see evidence that they hadn’t all died,” she says. “But it’s still unbelievable to me that I can go to [False Bay’s] Seal Island and not see any white sharks. It’s something I never expected, and I miss them a lot.”

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is our staff writer Ross Andersen. Ross has written about a prospective woolly-mammoth reserve in Siberia, a grisly slaughter at the National Zoo, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s ambition to build a superintelligence. He is working on a book about the quest to find intelligent life beyond Earth.Ross is dreaming big dreams for the Lakers this season, obsessing over Don DeLillo, and taking loved ones to an immersive museum exhibition that leaves them feeling wobbly but grateful.First, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic: Cover story: The patriot The 22 most exciting films to watch this season Millennials have lost their grip on fashion. The Culture Survey: Ross AndersenThe upcoming event I’m most looking forward to: The NBA season is starting, and for the first time in years, my Lakers have an intelligently constructed roster. (Rob Pelinka, all is forgiven.) In the spirit of preseason expansiveness, I will note that this year, the Lakers could possibly—an elastic word!—notch their 18th NBA championship, passing the Celtics, who also have 17. There is even some chance they could do it by beating the Celtics themselves in the finals. As the winter wears on, timelines will branch, and many hoped-for futures will fall away. But so long as that one is alive, I’ll be locked in. [Related: It had to be the Lakers (From 2020)]Best novel I’ve recently read, and the best work of nonfiction: I’ve been on a Don DeLillo kick, primarily for the line-to-line style. I tore through The Names and am now reading Underworld, but between them I read Libra, my favorite book of his so far. It’s a fictionalization of the Kennedy assassination. DeLillo’s novel alleges a conspiracy, but does so largely within the established facts of the Warren Commission’s report. The result is a dark, paranoid American fable that reads so real, I’m making it my nonfiction pick, too. [Related: Don DeLillo on the anniversary of Apollo and Earthrise]A quiet song that I love, and a loud song that I love: Quiet: Air’s “Alone in Kyoto,” especially on a train. Loud: Rihanna’s sludgy, wall-of-sound cover of Tame Impala’s “New Person, Same Old Mistakes.” The original was already great, but I haven’t returned to it since hearing her version.A cultural product I loved as a teenager and still love, and something I loved but now dislike: I fell hard for R&B during its ’90s golden age. At one point, the intro to my voicemail was D’Angelo’s “Me and Those Dreamin’ Eyes of Mine.” No regrets. Almost all of it still bangs, but some of the genre’s more saccharine songs are getting a skip from me now. Keith Sweat’s “Make It Last Forever” is safe. Most Boyz II Men songs aren’t, except for the one with Mariah.An author I will read anything by: Lauren Groff. As a result of some bad decisions, I once had to spend nine hours at the Denver airport. I coped by bingeing Fates and Furies, Groff’s much-copied dueling-perspective take on marriage. I liked that book a lot, but it was her fourth novel, Matrix, that really set the hook. It takes place in a 12th-century convent in England that she reimagines in great sensory detail—to have read this book is to remember the chill of the convent’s stone walls. Groff always has at least one eye on the natural world, and I love that she’s unafraid to write in a spiritual key. It puts her books into larger, more ancient conversations than your average work of Brooklyn autofiction. [Related: The writer who saw all of this coming]The last debate I had about culture: I’ve been making a regular, if somewhat half-hearted, case that Lewis Strauss, Robert Downey Jr.’s character in Oppenheimer, is misunderstood. [Related: Oppenheimer’s cry of despair in The Atlantic]Something I recently rewatched, reread, or otherwise revisited: My son and I just saw a rerelease of 2001: A Space Odyssey at the Alamo Drafthouse. It was nominally for research; I’m writing a nonfiction book about a team of scientists who are trying to make first contact. But he and I also have history with this movie. A few years ago, we saw a 70-mm print on the IMAX screen at the Smithsonian. The late Douglas Trumbull, who did many of the special effects, gave introductory remarks. This viewing couldn’t match that, but the images still cast a spell. There was a small collective gasp among the audience when the screen filled up with the famous tracking shot of Dave, the red-suited astronaut, walking through a shimmering octagonal corridor toward the pod-bay doors and the deeper human future.A poem, or line of poetry, that I return to: Rilke: “Spring has come again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.”A painting, sculpture, or other piece of visual art that I cherish: As part of a recent career retrospective, the artist Laurie Anderson painted an entire room at the Hirshhorn Museum, here in Washington, D.C., with a base layer of slick black. She then used chalky white paint to cover its floor and walls with illustrations and quotes, many of them existential in one way or another. When it first opened, I went with my daughter, and we were both taken aback by its forcefulness. No matter where you looked, you couldn’t escape Anderson’s thoughts. A lot of what gets marketed as immersive art these days is a warm bath—a swirly Van Gogh light show set to tinkly music. Anderson’s room is confronting. I’ve taken several people to it since, and they’ve all come out wobbly, but grateful.A favorite story I’ve read in The Atlantic: Our October cover story, “Jenisha From Kentucky.” Among its other virtues, it’s a brilliant detective tale. The writer, Jenisha Watts, conducts a thorough and painful excavation of her childhood. She uncovers family secrets and holds them up to the light. She reimagines her past, present, and future selves. The language is beautiful and direct. It’s perfect for a Sunday morning. [Related: What it’s like to tell the world your deepest secrets]The Week Ahead Land of Milk and Honey, a novel by C. Pam Zhang about a chef who escapes a dystopian smog by taking a mysterious job on a mountaintop in Italy (on sale Tuesday) The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s beloved tale, directed by Wes Anderson and starring Benedict Cumberbatch (streaming on Netflix this Wednesday) Season 4 of Lego Masters, where enthusiasts compete in various building challenges, (premieres Thursday on Fox) Essay Richard Kalvar / Magnum Dogs Need Understanding, Not DominanceBy Kelly Conaboy In 2022, the researchers Lauren Brubaker and Monique Udell recruited 48 parents and their children for a study on the behavioral effects of different parenting styles. The adult subjects were given a survey about their expectations for their children, and how they typically respond to their needs; the children were tested to determine their attachment style, sociability, and problem-solving skills. I should probably mention that the children involved were dogs. The dogs who were cared for by owners with an “authoritative” style, meaning one where high expectations matched a high responsiveness toward their dog’s needs, were secure, highly social, and more successful at problem-solving … The language might sound familiar to those acquainted with the concept of “gentle parenting,” a philosophy that’s become popular in recent years. Tenets of gentle parenting, including a focus on empathy in parent-child interactions, and avoiding punishment in favor of helping the child understand the reasons behind their actions and emotions, have been linked to positive outcomes for kids. And although children are obviously very different from dogs, a parallel shift in approach has been happening in humans’ relationships with their canine kids. Read the full article.More in Culture Russell Brand wasn’t an anomaly. Tolstoy was wrong about happy families. Nixon between the lines What Emily Dickinson left behind The overlooked danger that’s massacring wildlife ​​The undoing of a great American band Some good news about your malaise Parent diplomacy is overwhelming teachers. A high-water mark in American mass culture Viewfinder: Confronting the unbelievable Poem: “Distressed Haiku” Poem: “All Our Pretty Sons” Catch Up on The Atlantic Anne Applebaum: The American face of authoritarian propaganda Airlines are just banks now. The tragedy of Google Search Photo Album French tightrope walker Nathan Paulin walks on a wire during a performance of "Les Traceurs Theatre de Chaillot au Musee d'Orsay" by Rachid Ouramdane, as part of the European Heritage Days and the Cultural Olympiad in Paris, on September 16, 2023. (Julien De Rosa / AFP / Getty) A reenactment of a 17th-century civil war in England, a cotton harvest in Uzbekistan, and more in our editor’s selection of the week’s best photos.Katherine Hu contributed to this newsletter.Explore all of our newsletters.

Caesars are back, big caesars and little caesars, in big countries and little countries, in advanced nations and developing nations. The world seems to be full of self-proclaimed strongmen strutting their stuff, or waiting in the wings and plotting a comeback after a humiliating fall. And we thought it couldn’t happen here. How can these uncouth figures with their funny hair, their rude manners, and their bad jokes take such a hold on the popular imagination? How can anyone bear to listen to their endless resentful rants? Surely, they can’t get away with this? People will see through them before it’s too late.But no. Here they are again, and in numbers. Look who’s leading in Argentina’s presidential race: Javier Milei, a former tantric-sex coach with a wild mop of dark hair and Elvis-impersonator sideburns, known as El Peluca (“The Wig”), who stumps the stage to the backing of a hard-rock group. El Peluca promotes monetarism, free love, and the sale of human organs; claims that climate change is a hoax; and wants to burn down the central bank and close the ministry of education—in short, a ragbag of eye-catchers, because eye-catching is what the would-be caesar is all about.The little caesars of today seem to get along quite nicely without any systematic ideology worth the name. For what consistent line have Donald Trump, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and even Britain’s Boris Johnson been operating on, beyond a shouty sort of nationalism and a carefully advertised hostility to immigrants—a mixture familiar from ancient times? The great Pericles himself instituted a law barring anyone not of Athenian parentage from claiming citizenship (his own, foreign-born mistress fell foul of the law).[From the September 2016 issue: Why are some conservative thinkers falling for Trump?]Yet why should this surprise us? Dictators of one sort or another have been an ever-lurking threat throughout history. They interrupted and betrayed the constitutional traditions of ancient Greece and the Roman Republic: Peisistratos, Critias, and the Thirty Tyrants in Athens; Sulla, Marius, and Julius Caesar in Rome. As early as the time of Thucydides and Plato, the word tyrannos had mutated from a neutral term for “king” into our modern pejorative sense of “tyrant.” Absolutist rulers broke up the city-states of medieval Germany and Italy.Nice-minded people may shy away from lumping together the excesses of a petty charlatan with the horrific deeds of a mass murderer. How can there be any comparison between a Johnson and a Putin? But only a dullard could fail to notice the painful similarities in their methods: the unabashed mendacity; the contempt for law, parliaments, and due process; and, above all, the relentless propaganda, inflaming old resentments and provoking new ones. “Propaganda, propaganda, now it all depends on propaganda,” Adolf Hitler declared at a tense moment during the Beer Hall Putsch. The putsch failed. But the lesson was learned, and not just by Hitler.Big caesars may come to power by outright lawless violence or by more or less legitimate means, as Louis-Napoléon, Benito Mussolini, and even Hitler did, and then consolidate their dictatorship in a so-called self-coup or autogolpe. Little caesars go only as far as they need to within a reassuring constitutional framework, which of course they cynically abuse by fixing elections, neutering parliament, and manipulating the courts. “Tinpot dictators” says it nicely. Yes, caesars occupy a broad spectrum, but the caesarist style is always much the same.It is an uncomfortable thought that caesars may pop up in any country and under all sorts of economic and political conditions. Which is why so many of us prefer not to think it. We would rather look back on any such experience as an unlucky blip that left scarcely a scratch on the body politic, mere “kerfuffle,” as Boris Johnson notoriously brushed aside Trump’s impeachment and acquittal on charges of inciting insurrection against his own government.But the damage is real enough. In Britain, the tendency on the political right is to concede, at most, that Johnson was too chaotic to be prime minister, too much of a joker to get anything much done. But it was largely Johnson’s personal achievement to smash the U.K.’s legal and political ties with Europe and cripple its continental trade. Less noticed are Johnson’s Five Acts, which came into force last year: restricting the right to judicial review; dissuading the poor from voting by requiring ID at polling stations (which even Johnson’s ally Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg described as a form of “gerrymandering”); bringing the Electoral Commission under the direct control of the government; granting the prime minister the unrestricted right to dissolve Parliament; giving the police the right to ban “noisy” protests; and, of course, stringent (but so far wholly ineffective) immigration controls. These measures bear a strong family resemblance to the repressive Six Acts of Lord Liverpool’s government in 1819, and are likely to be remembered with equal loathing.[Read: Ancient Rome’s collapse is written into Arctic ice]Those who continue to indulge the memory of Johnson as an overpromoted but endearing clown who kept us amused for a while should also recall his power-grabbing and obnoxious style of government. He purged the party of 21 senior members of Parliament, including two ex-chancellors of the exchequer. He sacked some half a dozen top civil servants in defiance of constitutional tradition. He expanded the Downing Street apparat from a few dozen to more than 100 functionaries. He diluted the ministerial code, so that offenders might escape with a reprimand instead of automatic dismissal, and then proceeded to let off or ignore a string of gropers and chiselers. And he repeatedly lied to Parliament about Partygate, which forced him to slink out of office in a humiliating exit never before experienced by a British prime minister.Last year in the U.K., the Year of the Three Prime Ministers, may not have been as bloody as A.D. 69 in ancient Rome, the Year of the Four Emperors (two of them were murdered and a third topped himself). But it was a uniquely excruciating moment in our modern political history, when chaos collapsed into farce, and at ruinous expense to the nation, while the world looked on in amazement and contempt.And how has America fared? There was nothing original about Trump’s agenda. Protectionism, hostility to foreign entanglements, persecution of immigrants (the title of Most Hated Immigrants passing over the years from the Italians to the Irish to the Jews, to the Chinese, to the Japanese, to the Mexicans)—all of this has been the staple fare of the American right since the 19th century. What is original about Trump, as is true of all caesars and would-be caesars, is the technique: the tweets, the rallies, the bullying, the nicknames, the floodlights, the slogans. A caesar creates his own visual culture and basks in it. Emperor Augustus had the text of his boastful brief autobiography, Res Gestae Divi Augusti, cast in bronze or carved in stone and then erected in public spaces all across the empire; today you can still see surviving fragments of this huge exercise in global PR. Ever since, the caesar has been a pioneer in the use of new media, including the inventions of printing and photography, the development of advertising, later cinema, radio, and television, and finally—perhaps most potent of all—social media, which gives him unrivaled direct access to every voter. Trump said quite frankly, “Without the tweets, I wouldn’t be here.”[Helen Lewis: Here lies Boris Johnson]The caesar’s delight in the visual image is no accident. He thrives in the moment; he is the enemy of long-winded statutes and codes of law and practice, and is the king of the photo opportunity. He is an endless source of stunts, gestures, masquerades: He may appear in the guise of a Greek god or a Roman emperor, or a construction worker or a fighter pilot, never resting in his efforts to convince the public that life is simply more vibrant, more fun when he is around. His verbal messages are deliberately simple, aimed at the lowest common denominator in his audience (a method extolled ad nauseam by the author of Mein Kampf). These communications also necessarily involve a good deal of distortion of the truth. Caesars are shameless liars. After two millennia, scholars have cottoned on to the fact that Julius Caesar embellished or invented large parts of his history of the Gallic Wars. Napoleon’s communiqués were so overblown that “to lie like a bulletin” became a catchphrase.Caesars know how to intimidate as well as charm, to frighten and shock, often by the use of foul language. Remember how Johnson scuppered Theresa May’s deal with the European Union by repeatedly denouncing it as “polishing a turd.” When, in the 1650s, Oliver Cromwell was attacked by judges for his lawless actions, he reportedly vilified them for invoking “Magna Farta,” and called the Petition of Right “the Petition of Shite.”Only a caesar can get things moving by making the circumstances abnormal. Otherwise, the new “national conservatism”—or the less pleasant inflections that its name brings to mind—is likely to remain the niche pursuit of a disgruntled minority. Yet the one thing that the movement’s Statement of Principles does not mention is leadership, because its promoters know that this is an indecent subject. The yearning for a strongman cannot be openly admitted. But they can’t do without him.[Rory Stewart: What to do when your political party loses its mind]Only a caesar has the chutzpah to break the rules, and to break open the treasury, as Julius Caesar did to grab the gold and silver needed to prosecute his war against Pompey, and Trump did under his emergency decree 9844 to grab the billions of dollars to build his Mexican wall, which Congress had denied him. By contrast, the idea that there is some hidden continuity between the conservatism of, say, Margaret Thatcher and today’s new right is fantasy. Thatcher was bossy and overbearing, and she made quite a few bad mistakes (her attempt to impose a poll tax, for one), but she was a stickler for the rules—as well as being a qualified lawyer, not a profession followed by most caesars—and she was deeply distressed when she was thought to have broken the code, as, for example, over the Westland Affair.Political analysts are rather reluctant to consider the phenomenon of caesarism. They prefer to think up new abstractions, or revive old ones, to describe the political tendencies of our day: authoritarian populism, white nationalism, illiberal democracy, neofascism. These terms may convey the broad outline of what we see around us, but not the motive force: We get a good idea of what the cart looks like, but where’s the bloody horse? Without the spark of a caesar, the rumbling discontents are unlikely to catch fire. Caesarism isn’t just a cute trope; it’s an ever-recurring danger. The crucial thing is to spot the incoming caesar before he crosses the Rubicon—and above all, to stop him from doing the comeback-kid act. Nobody said it was easy.But it can be done. This is an age of caesar-toppling, too. In the past three years, a U.S. president has been impeached twice, before and after being thrown out by the voters, and a British prime minister has been forced to resign by mass defections among his own ministers and then forced to leave the House of Commons by the Privileges Committee. The constitutional checks and balances worked. Accountability kicked in. We must never fall into the complacency of assuming that we have reached some liberal-democratic nirvana. History goes on, and it is still ours to make and remake. If applied with a little persistence, the rules can always break the rule-breakers in the end.

This past December, Elon Musk’s extended family gathered for Christmas. As was their tradition, they pondered a question of the year, which seemed strategically designed for Elon to answer: “What regrets do you have?”By that point in 2022, Musk had personally intervened in Russia’s war by controlling Ukraine’s internet access; had failed to tell his on-and-off girlfriend and co-parent Grimes that he had also fathered twins with one of his employees, and had been forced by a judge to follow through on a $44 billion purchase of Twitter; then fired most of its staff and alienated most of its advertisers. His main regret, he told his family, according to an account in Walter Isaacson’s new biography, Elon Musk, “is how often I stab myself in the thigh with a fork, how often I shoot my own feet and stab myself in the eye.”In Isaacson’s study of the world’s richest man, the reader is consistently reminded that Musk is powerless over his own impulses. Musk cannot control his desperate need to stir up drama and urgency when things are going well, Isaacson explains. He fails to show any kind of remorse for the multiple instances of brutally insulting his subordinates or lovers. He gets stuck in what Grimes has dubbed “demon mode”—an anger-induced unleashing of insults and demands, during which he resembles his father Errol, whom Isaacson describes as emotionally abusive.To report the book, Isaacson shadowed Musk for two years, answering his late-night text messages, accompanying him to Twitter’s office post-acquisition, attending his meetings and intimate family moments, watching him berate people. Reading the book is like hearing what Musk’s many accomplishments and scandals would sound like from the perspective of his therapist, if he ever sought one out (rather than do that, he prefers to “take the pain,” he says—though he has diagnosed himself at various moments as having Asperger’s syndrome or bipolar disorder or post-traumatic stress disorder).Choosing to use this access mostly for pop psychology may appeal to an American audience that loves a good antihero, but it’s a missed opportunity. Unlike the subjects of most of Isaacson’s other big biographies, including Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, and Leonardo da Vinci, Musk is still alive, his influence still growing. We don’t need to understand how he thinks and feels as much as we need to understand how he managed to amass so much power, and the broad societal impact of his choices—in short, how thoroughly this mercurial leader of six companies has become an architect of our future.What does it mean that Musk can adjust a country’s internet access during a war? (The book only concludes that it makes him uncomfortable.) How should we feel about the fact that the man putting self-driving cars on our roads tells staff that most safety and legal requirements are “wrong and dumb”? How will Musk’s many business interests eventually, inevitably conflict? (At one point, Musk—a self-described champion of free speech—concedes that Twitter will have to be careful about how it moderates China-related content, because pissing off the government could threaten Tesla’s sales there. Isaacson doesn’t press further.)The cover of Elon Musk shows Musk’s face in high contrast staring straight, with hands folded as if in prayer, evoking a Great Man of History and a visual echo of the Jobs volume. Isaacson’s central question seems to be whether Musk could have achieved such greatness if he were less cruel and more humane. But this is no time for a retrospective.[Read: Demon mode activated ]As readers of the book are asked to reflect on the drama of Musk’s past romantic dalliances, he is meeting with heads of state and negotiating behind closed doors. Last Monday, Musk convened with Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan; on Tuesday, Israel’s prime minister publicly called him the “unofficial president” of the United States. Also, Neuralink, Musk’s brain-implant start-up—mostly discussed in the book as the employer of one of the mothers of Musk's 11 known children—was given approval from an independent review board to begin recruiting participants for human trials. The book does have a few admiring pages on Neuralink’s technology, but doesn’t address a 2022 Reuters report that the company had killed an estimated 1,500 experimented-on animals, including more than 280 sheep, pigs, and monkeys, since 2018. (Musk has said that the monkeys chosen for the experiments were already close to death; a gruesome Wired story published Wednesday reported otherwise.)Isaacson seems to expect major further innovation from Musk—who is already sending civilians into space, running an influential social network, shaping the future of artificial-intelligence development, and reviving the electric-car market. How these developments might come about and what they will mean for humanity seems far more important to probe than Isaacson’s preferred focus on explaining Musk’s abusive, erratic, impetuous behavior.In 2018, Musk called the man who rescued children in Thailand’s caves a “pedo guy,” which led to a defamation suit—a well-known story. A few weeks later, he claimed that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private at $420 a share, attracting the scrutiny of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Isaacson covers these events by diagnosing Musk as unstable during that period and, according to his brother, still getting over his tumultuous breakup with the actor Amber Heard. (Ah, the toxic-woman excuse.) He was also, according to his lawyer Alex Spiro, “an impulsive kid with a terrible Twitter habit.” Isaacson calls that assessment “true”—one of the many times he compares Musk, now 52, to a child in the book.The people whose perspectives Isaacson seems to draw on most in the book are those whom Musk arranged for him to talk with. So the book’s biggest reveal may be the extent to which his loved ones and confidants distrust his ability to be calm and rational, and feel the need to work around him. A close friend, Antonio Gracias, once locked Musk’s phone in a hotel safe to keep him from tweeting; in the middle of the night, Musk got hotel security to open it.All of this seems reminiscent of the ways Donald Trump’s inner circle executed his whims, justifying his behavior and managing their relationship with him, lest they be cut out from the action. Every one of Trump’s precedent-defying decisions during his presidency was picked apart by the media: What were his motivations? Is there a strategy here? Is he mentally fit to serve? Does he really mean what he’s tweeting? The simplest answer was often the correct one: The last person he talked to (or saw on Fox News) made him angry.[Read: What Russia got by scaring Elon Musk]Musk is no Trump fan, according to Isaacson. But he’s the media’s new main character, just as capable of getting triggered and sparking shock waves through a tweet. That’s partially why Isaacson’s presentation of the World’s Most Powerful Victim is not all that revelatory for those who are paying attention: Musk exposes what he’s thinking at all hours of the day and night to his 157.6 million followers.In Isaacson’s introduction to Elon Musk, he explains that the man is “not hardwired to have empathy.” Musk’s role as a visionary with a messianic passion seems to excuse this lack. The thinking goes like this: All of his demands for people to come solve a problem right now or you’re fired are bringing us one step closer to Mars travel, or the end of our dependence on oil, or the preservation of human consciousness itself. His comfort with skirting the law and cutting corners in product development also serves a higher purpose: Musk believes, and preaches in a mantra to employees at all of his companies, that “the only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics. Everything else is a recommendation.”By presenting Musk’s mindset as fully formed and his behavior as unalterable, Isaacson’s book doesn’t give us many tools for the future—besides, perhaps, being able to rank the next Musk blowup against a now well-documented history of such incidents. Instead of narrowing our critical lens to Musk’s brain, we need to widen it, in order to understand the consequences of his influence. Only then can we challenge him to do right by his power.

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