Yes, a biography worth reading. Nikola Tesla was a fascinating personality that tapped into the unknown and unseen.

Tesla is da Vinci reincarnated! I'm certain of it
RTC what an amazing man!
2017 Lenten Buddy Reading Challenge book #20

3.5 Stars. Nikola Tesla is such an interesting man, and I think this is an excellent biography. Why so few stars then? I found that this book was occasionally repetitive, and dragged at times. I would still recommend it.

Very technical. If you have an interest in science, this is your book. I learned a lot about Tesla that I did not know. However, I think it might have been too scientific for this English major. I can't wait to give this book to my dad (he has worked at a power plant for over 30 years) and see what he thinks.

This is the first book we've read dealing specifically with Nikola Tesla, so we don't have much to compare it to by ways of evaluation, but overall it seemed to us to be an even handed biography- neither sycophantic nor intentionally denigrating. A sensational and often speculated upon historical figure, this text took the tone of general skepticism and avoidance of anything that could lean into sensationalism. The organization of book was easy to follow, and the reader's presentation of the audiobook was top notch!

As far as biographies go, this one was a challenging read. Being the inventor of the electric age, this biography was chalked full of technical descriptions of Tesla's inventions including his induction motor, polyphase systems, oscillators, etc, etc. As amazing as these inventions and innovations were, not having an electric or engineering background I often found that I was at a loss as to what exactly these inventions were or did. The same goes for the extensive sections on patents and patent law. Not having a legal background, I was not aware of the importance of patents. Now I know better. It's absolutely ridiculous how often Tesla's patents were violated with no royalties paid to the inventor. I'm looking directly at you Marconi. As a result of his patents alone, Tesla should have died a very, very rich man. Not the pauper that he was at the end of his life.
What I enjoyed most about "Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla: Biography of a Genius" was Tesla's relationships and rivalries with a who's who of historical figures. Especially Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, J.P. Morgan, John Jacob Astor and Guglielmo Marconi.
I also enjoyed the history of the current wars between Thomas Edison and his direct current (DC) and George Westinghouse and his alternating current (AC), the development of wireless technology, radio, X-Rays, remote control, robotics and even death rays (lasers).
Nicola Tesla was a futurist and genius of the highest order. The contribution that he made to the modern world is incalculable.
While this biography can be overly technical at times, I would still recommend it. 4-Stars.

Side note: John Jacob Astor IV "the richest man on the Titanic," attended Harvard University in his youth. His unfortunate nickname? Yes, you guessed it. "Jack Ass."

This is a bit dry and very technical, but totally fascinating! Tesla’s life spanned 86 years and witnessed some amazing discoveries, many his own. He was an eccentric with an astonishing mind, living decades in NYC hotels, developing a penchant for pigeons, and was a self-described celibate. We can thank Nikola Tesla for many of our modern conveniences. And he was friends with Mark Twain which is pretty cool in my book.

I fell down a Tesla rabbit hole that will probably never escape. His life is the greatest tragedy that I have ever come to know. I hope that he is able to see how the world loves him from the great beyond. Great book!

So I got this book recommended to me because I was interested in learning more about Tesla and see him without all the mysticism and idolatry that is currently attached. The issues is....HEY DID YOU KNOW HE INVENTED AC POWER!...that the author seems to have idolized him even while claiming to be very...DID YOU KNOW THAT HE CREATED ALL THE THEORIES THAT MADE RADIO WORK!....researched about the book and even found a number of 1st source series of papers in both the US Archives, various schools, and even translated papers from the Tesla Museum in Belgrade.
My biggest issue is...HEY DID YOU KNOW HE CREATED THE THEORIES FOR LASERS!!!...the author does time jumps even while having the chapters labeled with specific years....REALLY DID YOU KNOW THAT TESLA INVENTED AC POWER!.... and one of the other issues is that the author dives into minutia about historical events or even historical people that Tesla ran across. Which at times is amazing, but at times it felt like whole chapters were dedicated the life story of folks like Astor, Morgan, or Westinghouse; all of which seemed to derail the story about Tesla.
The book is broken up into three major sections....HONEST TO GOSH, DID YOU KNOW THAT TESLA WROTE THE THEORIES ABOUT RADIO WAVES.... one is about his creation of AC power and the involvement with the Current Wars the fight with Edison. He ends up being poor after trading away the patent rights and then dives into the creation of his fight to create wireless power transfer system. The issue is that the author starts to ruin his story telling with awkward time jumps...HONEST TO GOD HE CREATE THEORIES ON RADIO WHILE DISCOVERING AC THEORY BUT LETS TALK ABOUT THAT LATER.... He mentions events that will happen much into the future or people he will run across later in the story.
The next section is the discovery of radio theories and the fight with Marconi. Tesla then spends forever trying to figure out how to wireless power transfer and to do wireless radio system across the world. He also starts to play with X-rays...SO LETS TALK ABOUT HIS LASER AND PARTICLE BEAM THEORIES AND REALLY DID YOU KNOW THAT HE DID DISCOVER THE SUPERIOR POWER SYSTEM IN AC POWER AND OH MY GOD HIS RADIO THEORIES WERE SUPERIOR TO MARCONI... which leads him down other discoveries about how the world works. At the same time we start to see his eccentricities that would begin to affect his abilities to survive in the world. The fight to prove his radio theories are useful, but he could never move beyond his theory realm and actual begin to build something that could be sold. Everyone else took his theories and ran with them. It was here in this time period that his financial issues started to affect his life and would drag on him some more.
The last section talks about his development of particle beams and weapons that could be used with ....SO YOU KNOW HIS AC POLYPHASE ELECTRICAL POWER SYSTEM WAS SUPERIOR RIGHT, AS WELL AS HIS INVOLVEMENT WITH RADIO DEVELOPMENT WAS SUPERIOR TO MARCONI AND ALL OTHERS AND HE USED TO EAT WITH JOHN ASTOR AND J.P. MORGAN WHILE LIVING THE WALDORF-ASTORIA....defense systems or offensive systems. He talked shop with Einstein and some others in the nuclear physics world. He was always getting thrown out of one or more hotels after abusing various credits and when he passed away in 1943, someone in the US government or even the Yugoslavian government seized his papers and that lead to the running of various conspiracy theories that even today are tied to his name. Everything from the Nazis to the Communists to the UFOs. All from folks he associated with in the late 30s till his death in 1943, he did become friends with a German Scientist and Newspaper man who was found to have been a spy for the Nazis in 1941. He did do some selling according to papers discovered in the Tesla Museum, of weapons development to the Soviets via front company in the mid 30s when it was still outlawed by US laws. He did become embroiled into trying to find life on Mars and the Universe after finding radio waves while doing research, seemingly coming from outside this planet; he also wrote early science fiction stories and science research for Hugo Greenback's sci-fi pulp magazines.
The book ends on this note that his name really wasn't rediscovered until the 1990s and the discovery of how corrupt and dastardly Tom Edison was who basically brute forced his way to making a light bulb and creating electrical power, while Tesla who had an engineering training in schools in Serbia did the math and practical prototyping got things off the ground before being conned away by Edison, Westinghouse, Morgan, Astor, and a slew of others with regards to the patent rights.

The pros to this book showed that Tesla was a man who became very eccentric in his later life. The reasons why are complicated and even thought the author tries to do some psychoanalysis via his writings; it is hard to tell how an untrained individual could do that without having the subject in front of them to ask amplifying questions. There is also a huge amount of technical research described in the book about the various theories and the research that Tesla did. So it did describe what was going on to show they weren't fully crackpot ideas.

One of the biggest things as well that I hated was that the author does time skips in nearly all the chapters and retraces everything before this , in each section re-traced steps and as I tried to show in the review above. It was interesting the first time, by the second time it was okay, by the third and later time it was tiresome and annoying. Similarly, per the author's forward, they tried to scare away the mystical items and weirdness attached; yet the author spends some time within various chapters touching on various mystical items. Its annoying, beyond annoying and seems to derail everything that was intended of this author's promised.

This book gave me a hint as to the nature of the elementary particle. So, thanks, book! It was the part where Tesla assumes that ether might have absolute density. Something clicked in my head as I read it., and I realized that the elementary particle isn't something tiny. On the contrary, it's the sum total of all material assets. It's like a cheese head with tunnels and vortexes, and is an ever-expanding, gigantic totality. "The God particle". Don't know if I'm right, time will show.
Also, I was reading the Russian-language version, and the name of Houston street isn't translated as House-ton, but as Hue-ston as in "Whitney Houston", which is disappointing to me as an ex-New Yorker :)

This book was long. I had my doubts about finishing this one in a month but I ended up wrapping it up in just over a week. Although, that has more to do with Tesla's character and his inventions rather than Author's writing style. Though, to be fair to the Author, he has done a decent job of making the book dramatic enough especially considering it is actually a Biography.

It is clear from the book that Tesla was a Brilliant man whose ideas were well ahead of his time. At the same time, book has enough evidence and stories from his life to prove that many of those ideas were not executed to completion by Tesla. It is also clear that Tesla was no genius when it came to his social skills and financial management. This book makes you wonder what more greater inventions this great (sometimes also called mad) scientist could've done for man kind, if he had at least one of those two skills.

Personally for me, the best (and partly sad) part of the book were Tesla's and J.P Morgan's exchanges. Frankly, I really do not think either J.P or Tesla were wrong in what they did. Tesla had really a lot to prove since he had no practical application of most of the claims he was making and Morgan was trying to be what he is, a Businessman.

The desperation in Tesla's tone in those letters to J.P Morgan clearly presents the state of his mind in those days. In spite of that, it is commendable that Tesla's objective was more or less to bring about a Revolution in the Wireless Systems. It is even more admiring because of the fact that most of his contemporaries especially Edison, Marconi etc were bad mouthing Tesla in the scientific community and were always on the look out for ways to bring him down.

Other than this, the other interesting parts were stories about Westinghouse and RCA's formation, Tesla's rivalry with Edison and Marconi, Tesla's views on Einstein's theory of relativity, World war and its impacts on US policies on Patent Infringement and many more.

It is a shame that Tesla (and Edison) never won a Nobel Prize especially considering that other people who actually build their inventions using his ideas went on to get a Nobel Prize and also lived a much more financially stable life than him.

Overall, I would say the book is good. Just keep in mind the fact that it is a Biography and that the Author might not be highly qualified to give you all the technical details about Tesla's inventions.

I would like a copy of his life’s reading list (library) and Hitlers.

No intimate discussions of his gay lovers why? Request the documents from the federal govt and talk about why he lost his security clearance…. Why the world has been set back not only from b2B issues. How about pics of his letters?