Friday, May 29, 2015

Solid business writing - on Elon Musk & Tesla, wine thieves, ILM & Dr. Charles Arntzen

Some of the pieces are from a week or two ago, but there's been some really interesting business writing that I haven't posted on up until now.

From Businessweek were two excellent features, starting off with "Elon Musk's Space Dream Almost Killed Tesla," excerpted from the recently released Ashlee Vance book Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. It's a fascinating look at the Tesla and Space X CEO and related to Tesla were two additional interesting pieces, first a transcript of Musk's speech introducing Tesla Energy and then San Jose Mercury News article "Is Tesla's Powerwall home battery worth the price?" by Jonathan Fahey.

The other Businessweek story to note here was "A Pinot Noir: Hunting the Thieves Behind a Rash of Six-Figure Wine Heists" by Claire Suddath, a highly interesting read which brought to mind the Max Potter book Shadows in the Vineyard: The True Story of the Plot to Poison the World's Greatest Wine.

The other two pieces of really interesting recent business writing to mention were from other sources with Alex French and Howie Kahn for Wired writing "Inside the Magic Factory: The Untold Story of ILM, a Titan That Forever Changed Film," an oral history of the George Lucas created Industrial Light & Magic, and Adam Bluestein for Fast Company writing "Meet Ebola's Soft-Spoken, Plant-Loving Arch Nemisis" on Dr. Charles Arntzen, who came in at number one on the Fast Company "100 Most Creative People 2015" list.