Glynn's Reviews > Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla: Biography of a Genius

This was a good but difficult book. The author is intent on putting down in meticulous detail the life of this amazing character and in doing so skips around with chaotic effect. Tesla knew and interacted with many famous people of his time and it was hard keeping track of his interactions with them as the author related stories and jumped from one character to another.

The author relates in detail the many inventions and ideas that Nikola Tesla advanced that were subsequently used by other inventors who gave no credit to Tesla and in fact stole his ideas. There are many instances depicted where Tesla is depicted as constantly fighting to convince the world that his ideas were stolen by other famous inventors. There are chapters which begin with one topic and then switch for no particular reason to another seemingly unrelated topic.

There are things I liked about the book. I liked reading about Teslas conviction that he could communicate with Mars and how he had a vision of the world wide web and cellular communication. I was fascinated with the struggles Tesla had in the Wardenclyffe project.

I liked the depiction of Teslas relationship to Katherine Underwood Johnson and would have liked a more satisfying telling of that relationship. The author simply announces at one point a list of people who died and Katherine is among this list. This is the main problem I had with this book. The organization requires better editing.

Another aspect of the book that turned me off was the constant detail concerning monetary and financial problems. It seems like Tesla was constantly concerned with obtaining funding for his many inventions. I suppose this is the plight of many an inventor but I would have preferred less detailing of this (to me) boring topic.

Although I struggled with this book, I did enjoy reading about this great man's life and work and would recommend this book for anyone interested in Nikola Tesla.