Marc Seifer

Tesla is an unusual historical figure, living across cultures, in a period of quick technological transformation, a mix of engineer, scientist and trickster. The biography conveys the whole context and you are drawn into this budding world of inventions and patents which Tesla wove into his being naturally, but never quite fully benefited from. He liked jumping from projects and ideas that could be created quickly to fantastic creations that might affect the whole planet's magnetic field. show more The personality of the inventor is that of a quirky slightly capricious genius: one that revels in his view of the world even as the actual social mechanics take advantage of him and "steal" his inventions. But the real magical genius of Tesla is about having a picture of how electromagnetism works at an intuitive level, able to bend and twist these dynamics to create new tools. The book conveys the full opportunity and tragedy of the character's life, his desire to ultimately be recognised as the master of E&M, while many see him as a strange magician, a showoff, an antisocial grump. show less

This very long, very detailed biography of Nikola Tesla, a maverick scientist and inventor, one of the fathers of the modern electrical world, is difficult to recommend. The main problem is that style interferes with the big picture. I presume that this book is an expansion of a history of science academic PhD thesis - and it shows. Consequently, the voice is, in the main, dry, at times oddly sycophantic, and obsessed with naming names that usually mean nothing to the reader. Seifer talks of show more graphology and analysing Tesla's handwriting (pseudoscientific rubbish), and has various sections where he psychoanalyses Tesla, mainly based on Freud (also all rubbish). In contrast, he fails to use modern psychological language to describe Tesla's foibles (he was almost certainly suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, but we have to infer this from the text, rather than hear the label).

These are minor compared to the two main faults, however. The first is such a detailed, comprehensive description of Tesla's life, that it's extremely difficult for the reader to get an overall sense of Tesla's accomplishments. Second, the author is obviously not scientifically literate, and has not even carried out the proper research to assess the validity of each of Tesla's ideas or proposed inventions. This admittedly is a tricky task for a character who was as much a showman as an inventor, and who spun so many lies about how far along his projects were that he probably at times believed in his own lies, and was at times very deluded about their chances of success and import. Yet at almost no time do we trust Seifer to guide us through this minefield, which is a huge shame. In the main, Seifer's strategy is simply to assume that because Tesla was such a great man, with a huge intellect, that everything he touched must have been genius quality (a far better strategy would have been to assume that Tesla had a few good ideas amidst many bad ones, and to have been sceptical of anything that didn't become a commercial success).

Consequently, we as readers not only have to see through the many lies of Tesla, but the many foibles of Seifer, to try to get a sense of Tesla the man and the inventor. It's clear that Tesla did transform the world, since his inventions enabled electricity to be efficiently generated and transported. But it's also clear that Tesla invested years in other inventions that would never work, and that he had a rather poor grasp of many features of physics. For instance he never accepted relativity, and believed even to the end that some particles could greatly surpass the speed of light.

I guess, despite all this, Seifer should be praised for giving enough of a sense of Tesla, for making us realise that his place in history should never, as he wished, be up there with Newton and the other greats. But he wasn't far off the far more famous Edison in accomplishments either, and so Tesla's at times awkward personality has done him no favours in how history has remembered him. show less

Wizard: Life and Times of Nikola Tesla Audiobook
 
I listened to this in my vehicle over many weeks. I have always been fascinated by Nicola Tesla and also aware that he has been "cultified" to a great extent and that some of his biographies are questionable in terms of veracity.
 
This biography claims to be the most truthful it terms of the author having accessed much of the original material available and not having relied on previous biographers. I guess in this way some of the myths about show more Mr Tesla get debunked along the way.
 
He did invent wireless as we know it and Marconi's patent was overturned by the US Supreme Court in 1943 thereby acknowledging Tesla as the inventor of wireless. Notwithstanding that, I was brought up with the belief that Marconi was the man. Just goes to show that a well repeated lie beats the truth hands down on most days.
 
This biography is nothing if not comprehensive. It pretty much starts at the beginning and ends at the end and in between those points not many stones are left unturned in the attempt to portray this genius. Does it succeed? Well, I'd have to say yes to that. Did I enjoy it? Maybe, it was very long and very repetitive in places and sometimes the format got in the way of the material.
 
But you don't pick up a biography for entertainment so the criteria for review are somewhat different. It is a well researched and put together piece of work. I don't think the author is impartial, I think he is a complete fan of Mr Tesla and has had to temper his enthusiasm in places. I think being a fan of the subject is not a bad thing in a biographer.
 
There were a couple of bits that I struggled with, the author's Freudian analysis of Tesla's celibacy stretched my credibility and patience but I feel curmudgeonly in saying that because that piece of criticism is like saying that there was a speck of dust on the cover. If you want to know more about Nicola Tesla this is the book.
 
He also covers the conspiracy theorists' subject of his "missing papers" and the "death ray".
 
I guess I could list all the things that we owe to Nicola Tesla, like our AC power system that is used globally and say that he didn't just come up with the idea of how to make AC power but he presented all of it complete in one go, the generation, distribuition and deployment. And that in the face of mathematicians with "conclusive" proof that AC electricity was an impossibility. That IBM, when patenting the ideas and technology in their mainframe computer, found that they could not take out some patents because Nicola Tesla had already patented the ideas 50 years earlier.
 
The man was a genius, flawed maybe but a genius nonetheless and this book will illuminate and illustrate that completely.
 
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The biography of Nikola Tesla. I wish someone would tell me why we learn about Thomas Edison in school, but not Nikola Tesla. NOTHING we have in our current society would be possible without the inventions and research this great man did. He is responsible for AC current which powers virtually every home and business in the world. Edison was in business making DC current and fighting a battle with Tesla (which Edison lost, thankfully) to have his vastly inferior form of electricity (because show more DC voltage and current drop over distance and can't be distributed for more than a few miles from where it is generated, while AC current can go for hundreds of miles). Tesla invented the florescent light (Edison did incandescent). Tesla invented remote control boats and vehicles. Tesla invented the oscillators which are the basis of radio transmission which Marconi pirated illegally and took the credit for (this was proven in court and Tesla was vindicated as the true inventor of radio transmission). These are but the tip of the iceberg. Tesla is without any doubt the greatest inventor in the history of mankind. He was also pretty flakey and had a huge ego and an inability to make sound financial decisions, but that does not take away from the greatness of his intellect and ability to see the potential of things that others had never given any thought to. The book is well written, though be aware that by it's nature, it does deal with science and inventions which the average person may be unaware of. I did not have any problem following most of the content. show less