The amount of research that went into this book is overwhelming & reading it can at times be exhausting. It was not the fault of the author but rather just my attention span out paced the cadence of the author. Others have written comprehensive reviews so I'll mention my favorite sections:
-The history of Tesla's AC development and the "friction" associated with it. How his colleagues were less than honest and so forth...(I don't want to give too much away).
-The vast amount of his work that was appropriated by the US government & kept secret after his death.

Mr. Seifer’s style didn’t connect with me. There’s very little building of a narrative. It’s just a series of loosely connected anecdotes and long quotes and misconceptions that are presented and then refuted or confirmed Then on page 250, he suddenly starts using section headings within chapters. I like this idea but it was jarring to read this much of the book and then have it tossed in. Oh and he uses italic to emphasis soooo much. He also uses so many quotes that I was left thinking he couldn’t come up with enough to say himself or couldn’t figure out how to paraphrase. That said, I did learn a bunch about a few historical figures.

For starters, I learned Tesla was a weird dude. To wit:

“To Tesla, his remote-controlled boat was not simply a machine, it was a new technological creation endowed with the ability to think. In Tesla’s view, it was also, in a sense, the first nonbiological life-form on the planet.” P.203

This was because he thought ideas were simply reactions to external stimuli. He thought that there’s no such thing as intuition. Aka, he believed in Tabula Rasa, the philosophy that the human mind is a blank slate and incapable of forming anything without external stimuli. Perhaps related to this was that he thought there was something called ether, which was an invisible material through which everything travels. It was this belief that lead him to look at Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and say. “Nope!”

But he was as good a theoretical thinker as he was a bad business man. He used alternating current for lightbulbs in contrast to Edison’s direct current. They were much more efficient but thanks to Edison being a better marketer, they were ignored for so long. Edison was also quicker on the patent applications, sort of. This book had So…many…lawsuits… over patents.

Then there’s wireless frequencies:
“frequencies are referred to as Hertzian waves, when in fact they are really Tesla’s.” (p. 97)

But getting back to Tesla v. Edison, the war between them took a macabre turn when plans of the first electric chair were developed. Edison comes up with the procedure on how; manacles and a skull cap, shaved head, and hands in water. (pp. 56-57)

There were supporting characters a-plenty. One was J.P. Morgan. To my mind, he was a despicable human being. One reason I have this opinion was when he bought massive amounts of shares in the Chicago-Burlington Railroad. So much so that he caused the Wall Street Panic of 1901. What’s worse is that he caused a similar panic in 1893, too. He left his mark on business, too.

When JP realized Edison electric was so far in debt, he had Elihu Thompson Houston buy the firm outright. The new company was called General Electrics; aka GE. (p. 77) JP was also a source of funding for Tesla’s projects. But he refused to give the inventor any more money multiple times. So many times, in fact, that Tesla’s begging became annoying as hell. But one of the times was when Tesla mentioned the project JP was funding would help bring about unlimited free energy. This was another example of how bad a businessman he was and how focused on the dollar JP was.

Two more unrelated bits of trivia before I go on my way.

First, blips don’t show up on radar because they’re made of Kevlar and filled with helium, neither of which register on radar. (p. 331)

And second, Marconi may have been the target when the Germans sank the Lusitania. (p. 375)

This book is for Tesla fanboys. There are so many exhaustive quotes, some pages are nothing but a series of lengthy quotes chained together with a word or two from the author. And there are so many irrelevant details that I can see how people infatuated with the man and/or his work would love it. For me, though? I just didn’t connect with it.

Marc Seifer wrote a comprehensive biography of his underapreciated savant relative. As a handwriting analyst Marc provides his professional opinion about some of the remaining handwritten artifacts, but not often enough.

I've been spoiled by Laura Hillenbrand, John Meacham, & Edmund Morris as they tend to set up a story progression thats intriguing and develops a conscious or unconscious natural reader inquiry at which point the authors more than satisfy the inquiring mind. Marc Seifer satisfies but with a less natural setup and sometimes it feels academic.

I learned much of Nicola Tesla from this book and it's most likely an authoritative work so I will freely encourage its visit.

You know that person at work who is full of his own genius, and is always starting but never finishing projects? Tesla is that guy. I have a low opinion of him after reading this book.

I also think the book would have been improved by a more rigorous modern assessment of which of his so-called inventions are legit. There was something moderately snake-oily about Tesla’s announcements of his later inventions, and a more critical assessment would have been helpful.

This was extraordinarily fascinating. I knew of Tesla and that he was an incredible mind, but I never could've dreamed all that he did. I think that this biography is readily accessible to most, but anyone with technical background in machines and electrical elements would likely enjoy it even more because they would more fully understand what his brain was capable of. Even so, I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys nonfiction and biographies.

Well it took a while to read but i finished it.
Not sure what to say, Tesla was certainly an electrical genius but was quite infantile when it came to to business. His disdain for the business aspect of inventing was his ultimate downfall, and while i understand his dislike for that aspect there is no excuse for not being familiar with all parts of inventing. Which includes the gritty world of business and investing. As much as we would like to believe that others share our altruistic vision, it is completely foolish to deny that there are others out there ruthless enough to take what they want from us and not care if they leave someone broken.
This was a good book, a learning experience for anyone that wants to better the world.

This was not an easy listen. Over 22 hours dense with information, including technical descriptions of Nikola Tesla's inventions!
This being said, I am glad I bought this audiobook. It covers not only Tesla's inventions and ideas but also his cultural background, his relationships with quite a number of the luminaries of the times, as well as his physical and mental health.
For this reader/listener with no electrical engineering background, the descriptions of Tesla's inventions and postulated theories, most of which in his own words, were a little hard to understand, let alone evaluate. However, bearing in mind that this is not a scientific appreciation of Tesla's work but his biography, the book fulfilled my desire to know more about Tesla's achievements and why he was transformed into a mythical figure. The technical descriptions were informative enough to give the general reader/listener a fairly good insight into an array of Tesla's inventions, including both the proved and the postulated ones.
Therefore, I appreciate Mr. Seifer's efforts to do Nikola Tesla justice, separating the myth built around him from historic facts, fairly pointing out where Tesla was wrong, and thus bringing Tesla's fascinating accomplishments and ideas/postulated theories into proper perspective.

I liked how the book was organized. It was set chronologically, yet centered on Tesla's world wireless communication system (Wardenclyffe), involving Tesla's desire and efforts to make wireless transmission of power possible (which seems to have stuck in the throat of the electrical engineering companies battling for their share in the market). What I found both interesting and saddening were the descriptions of the competition between inventors, disputes about who was 'the first' and Tesla's struggles against patent infringements. The book renders both Tesla's virtues and his weaknesses, and I must admit that some of Tesla's quirks made me dislike him at times. In spite of it, I found the events leading to the development of radio (the Wireless) most saddening. Tesla aimed valiantly high (ahead of this time), which unfortunately led him to a blind alley and lose the battle with Marconi (though he was able to recover some money in the Courts long after Marconi was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics).

I digress a little, but I couldn't help but laugh at myself when I read Tesla's argument against Einstein's theory of relativity, claiming, “I hold that space cannot be curved, for the simple reason that it can have no properties. ... Of properties we can only speak when dealing with matter filling the space. To say that in the presence of large bodies space becomes curved is equivalent to stating that something can act upon nothing. I, for one, refuse to subscribe to such a view.“
Well, as I myself was inclined to refuse to subscribe to such a view, I would recommend Tesla (if he were alive) to read Galloping with Light - Einstein, Relativity, and Folklore in order to learn how to understand/interpret Einstein's Theory of Relativity and the concept of 'curved space' properly.


All in all, I congratulate Mr. Seifer on well researched and fairly even-handed biography of Nikola Tesla. While some of Tesla's postulated inventions, as described, left me wondering whether they were only the product of a brilliant dreamer (in this context, be prepared for a bit of conspiracy theories at the end of the book, regarding Tesla's 'death beam weapon'), the book as a whole succeeded to convince me that this genius deserves better recognition.

As my review refers to the audio version of Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla: Biography of a Genius, let me say a word or two about the narration. Simon Prebble's performance is excellent indeed. It suits the times in which Tesla lived, as well as the general mood of the book. I particularly enjoyed how Mr. Prebble voiced Tesla's personal correspondence with J.P. Morgan and others, bringing life and personality to the characters in the book.

Well researched but disruptive biography on Nikola Tesla. Loaded with intrigue and drama. Author completely opposed to Nikola Tesla's Free Energy projects. He also takes the time to write a full chapter about how John Ernst Worrell Keely was a charlatan and a fake -- when you actually do proper research, you realize that Tesla and Keely were truly progressive inventors and researchers, Tesla into electricity, Keely into sound.

Biographer is unqualified to make statements on Tesla's energy research, but still makes them. This is a biography which can be read by those who are not interested in anything Tesla did technologically / technically. This is for those who like to know where Tesla lived, which address, or whether he was straight or not. It's quite sad that this is held up as one of the best biographies on Nikola Tesla.

I endorse this book. If this book were a person, that person would kick Chuck Norris' ass. If this book were edible, your head would explode from the sheer ecstasy. If this book were a sound, your ears would explode--twice. I must warn you, though. If you aren't worthy, then this book will burn your hands upon contact. Only the most devote individuals have ever been known to hold this book and survive, let alone read it.

In other words, this book is awesome.

My journey into the world of "Electrical Science," started off with me reading the historical fictional novel, "The Last Days Of Night," by Graham Moore. As I would soon learn the book was much more fiction than actual history and it, more or less, covered Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and Nikola Tesla, but I did come away with a small understanding of the difference between AC and DC electrical currents and enough interest to pursue the topic further.

I went on to read a number of nonfiction books that covered the history of electrical science which also dealt with the three main people associated with the science: Edison, Westinghouse, and Tesla. But, it was not until I read "Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, and Westinghouse and the Race to Electrify the World," by Jill Jonnes that my interest peaked.

So, from there I decided to read biographies dedicated not to the three men, but biographies on each individual, and I started with the most fascinating of them all, Nikola Tesla.

"Wizard: The Life and Times of Nicola Tesla/ Biography Of a Genius," by Marc J. Seifer was where I started and believe me I was not disappointed. The word 'genius' is often thrown around quite easily, but throughout this book I kept going through famous names who I thought were comparable with the genius of Mr. Tesla. After reading two-thirds of the book, I came up with two names who I thought Nikola Tesla was comparable too: Leonard da Vinci and Ben Franklin. And in a strange occurrence, a couple pages further into the book, a number of magazines and distinguished individuals said, "That Nicola Tesla deserved to be included in the select group of da Vinci and Franklin."

Nicola Tesla was born in Croatia and was of Serbian decent. He was able to speak up to ten different languages, and was profoundly affected by literature and poetry. Aside from being the genius behind the Niagara Falls Project that send electricity over greater areas than ever before imagined and lighting up much of the Chicago World's Fair in the middle 1890's, he also invented the first robots, wireless telegraphy, the radio (which was originally attributed to the Italian inventor Marconi who literally stole his ideas and was forced by courts in Europe and America to acknowledge his theft) and laser bean technology which the U.S. government refused to buy the patents for but was quick to get hold of the 87 trunks stored in Manhattan after his death.

Eighty years later, much of that material in those trunks are still considered highly classified and the material and designs have never been seen.

Mr. Tesla lived a life a luxury, residing at the Waldorf Astoria for over twenty years and other famous hotels throughout Manhattan. His only problem was his inability to keep up with the payments at these hotels. His associates included Mark Twain, John Astor, J.P. Morgan, George Westinghouse, the Rockefeller's, and the list goes on and on. But, it was J.P. Morgan who caused him the most headaches and destroyed his biggest dream The Wardenclyffe Tower that he built on Long Island and promised to deliver wireless telegraphs across the Atlantic.

Tesla, out of generosity, simply gave Morgan 51 per cent of the Wardenclyffe project for his investment, but once Morgan figured out that such a powerful device would cost some of his current businesses to go bankrupt he held back much of the investment and it was never completed and eventually destroyed.

Nicola Tesla was a complicated genius, generous, trusting, and was the first to admit that all inventions were simply the byproduct of ideas and creations that came before. He was a conservationist whose inventions he felt would keep the air and nature clean and would lessen the hard labor of the working class.
In summary Goethe's lyrics from "Prometheus."

Cover your heaven, Zeus,
With cloudy vapours,
And test your strength, like a boy
Beheading thistles,
On oaks and mountain peaks;
Yet you must leave
My earth alone,
And my hut you did not build,
And my hearth,
Whose fire
You envy me.

Did you suppose
I should hate life,
Flee into the wilderness,
Because not all
My blossoming dreams bore fruit?

Here I sit, making men
In my own image,
A race that shall be like me,
That shall suffer, weep,
Know joy and delight,
And ignore you
As I do!

"This new world should be the world in which the strong won't exploit the weak, the bad won't exploit the good, where the poor won't be humiliated by the rich. It will be the world in which the children of intellect, science and skills will serve to the community in order to make lives easier and nicer. And not to the individuals for gaining wealth.

This new world can't be the world of the humiliated, the broken but the world of free people and nations equal in dignity and respect for man."
Nicola Tesla

Poor, amazing Nikola Tesla. He was an incredible man and it's worth reading about his life and inventions, but find another book. This one has some great descriptions of Tesla's inventions, but the author is really judgmental and strangely pro Robber Barron, which is overall pretty distasteful.