I'm not sure how the author managed to write such a dull and dry biography of a man as interesting as Tesla. But, it was well-researched and I learned a few things from it, and some of the better anecdotes allow Tesla's brilliant and eccentric personality to shine through.

Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) truly was a man ahead of his time. He was born into an era when the materials that would prove his designs had yet to be invented. Even the words needed to convey his ideas had not been coined. Many of his designs are still classified seventy-three years after his death.Tesla was a magician who held people spellbound while conjuring up his amazing discoveries. Margaret Cheney was clearly in his thrall, evidenced by her resolute championship of Tesla against Edison. The awe of the man in the street on seeing the lights in Chicago in 1893 must have been akin to my awe when I hear a voice controlled by an object miles above my head tell me to turn left in one quarter of a mile. (How do they DO that?) Teslas inventions include (but are not limited to) the alternating current system of electricity, cryogenic engineering, early radar, and the remote control of vehicles and missiles.In 1981 when this biography was first published, Teslas claim that wireless transmission of power was possible over long distances had yet to be validated. Has he been proved right yet? I would have thought so. How else could Voyager 1 have traveled those billions of miles into intergalactic space? Or the rovers been guided from Earth to Mars to land in the precise areas designated by our scientists?Flamboyant and charismatic, ever a showman when in the public eye, Tesla was the opposite where his work was concerned. He worked virtually alone, with one or two trusted assistants who remained his lifelong friends. Although acclaimed for the discovery of the rotating magnetic field, and in spite of the staunch support of George Westinghouse, he never received his just deserts and much of his later life was spent seeking funding for his inventions. He died alone and impoverished in an unpaid hotel room.If ever a man deserved a Nobel Prize, that man was Tesla, but although nominated for one, the prize went instead to Professor W.H. Bragg and his son. Recognition came posthumously when the International Electrotechnical Commission in Munich made his name an international scientific unit. One tesla (symbol T) is the SI-derived unit of magnetic flux density.I think it fitting that Elon Musk, another young man who is ahead of his time, is keeping Teslas name alive while carrying out his own far-reaching, futuristic ideas. If only Elon and Nikola could have been alive at the same time. Who knows what they could have dreamed up between them.

I think Tesla may be one of the most brilliant and unique minds that this country has ever seen. I have been fascinated with Tesla ever since I heard about Tesla coils (which are devices that make artificial lightening). He is probably the greatest inventor of last century; Edison was simply a technician and a businessman, but Tesla was a visionary who foresaw a new, electrified world. He developed the system by which we generate most of our electricity, built the hydropower plant at Niagara Falls, invented radio and remote control, and may very well have split the atom at the turn of the century. Mainstream science is STILL investigating some of his most prescient theories. My only problem with this book is that I would have liked it to explain the science a bit better; I am not an electrical engineer, and do not understand the the finer points of electricity. The author breezes over very complicated concepts, and it was frustrating; I really wanted to understand some of the things that Tesla was doing, and Cheney sometimes doesn't even give us the broad strokes. I was also extremely annoyed when, for a few pages, she delved into some ridiculous Freudian theory to explain Tesla's obsessive compulsive disorder. Given the flaws, though, it's still a very good biography, and the only one that is at all recent, so I would recommend it to anyone with the faintest interest in science, just because the subject is so mesmerizing.

An excellent biography of a visionary, eccentric man given to strange obsessions and scientific genius. Well written, well researched, and well worth your time. Briefly for flavor: People speak of decades as if they form natural endings, when in fact they seldom end anything cleanly. Human survivors are dragged into new slices of time with which they feel no harmony and in which they are exposed to rasping change. So it was for Tesla in the Roaring Twenties. [p 275].

Had promise, but too preachy. This book was written with the obvious agenda of portraying Tesla to be the poor genius who was taken advantage of. It got old, real quick. I want to learn about the man and his inventions, and not be constantly bombarded with pity and sentiment. Get on with it! We all know he didn't get his deserved credit in his lifetime. This book aims to put back all of that credit x 10000 times more. I have to be honest, I could not finish the book. It's sad. I tried again a few times but it's just too annoying. The descriptions of his inventions also leaves much to be desired. I may return to this book someday in the future or I may try to find a different text about tesla that doesn't have such a ridiculously biased undertone.