Twelve Against the Gods: The Story of Adventure
Published in 1929, Twelve Against the Gods gathers a dozen character studies of figures the author calls true adventurers, including Alexander the Great, Casanova, Christopher Columbus, Mahomet, Charles XII of Sweden, Napoleon, and Woodrow Wilson. Bolitho, a South African born journalist who wrote for the Manhattan papers of the 1920s, frames each life around a single thesis. He argues that the adventurer is always at war with the society that produced them and that their attempts to bend fate usually end badly. The essays move at a fast, opinionated pace, mixing biography with philosophical asides about ambition and risk. Long out of print for much of the twentieth century, the book was reissued after Musk and other readers brought it back into circulation. It remains a favorite among entrepreneurs and military readers drawn to its meditations on outsized lives.
What you might want to know about Twelve Against the Gods: The Story of Adventure
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Twelve portrait essays on history's great adventurers, from Alexander the Great to Woodrow Wilson, framed by the cost of breaking with society.
Asked by Bloomberg in 2016 what he was reading, Musk named Bolitho's book and called it really quite good, briefly sending the long-forgotten title to the top of Amazon.
It was out of print for decades and remained obscure, but new editions appeared after Musk's mention renewed interest in it.
Twelve Against the Gods: The Story of Adventure was written by William Bolitho, published in 1929 by Simon & Schuster.
Twelve Against the Gods: The Story of Adventure is 360 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Twelve Against the Gods: The Story of Adventure takes most readers 5 to 8 hours to finish.
Twelve Against the Gods: The Story of Adventure is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.