A bit of a slog to get through but Tesla's life is worth reading about. The day I finished reading it I was in Manhattan for business and quite accidentally found myself at the corner 40th Street and 6th Avenue, officially known as “Nikola Tesla Corner”. It works that way with Tesla... ( )

Science and Pulitzer winning author, with the first book length biography of Tesla after his death in 1943. Tesla is revealed as a resplendent creator of the modern era--every radio and dynamo motor is a monument to his work. We remain intrigued by his demonstration of electrical power transmission without wire, plasma projectiles, and shielding armament against offensive weapons.

Born in 1956 in the hamlet of Smiljan, in the border province of Lika (now central Croatia), to Serbian Orthodox parents. He grew up living close to Nature [15, 17] in rural villages of the Velebit Mountains near the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea. He was distinguished in school in arithmetic and the ability to picture mechanical objects and mathmatical sequences in his head. His father had been a Serbian army officer and published poet (pseudonym 'Srbin Pravicich', or 'Man of Justice') who took up the ministry as pastor of the village church in Senj[9], where he was ordained as a priest. He had a large library in which Tesla spent much of his time growing up [31]. His mother was totally illiterate, artistically creative, brilliant and self-educated, with an unusually retentive memory [9, 10]. During an illness, he was roused to health by reading a book by Mark Twain, with whom he became close friends in later years [32]. As a student in College, professors devoted entire lectures to his ideas, he made scores of signficant inventions (loud-speaker, alternating current motor), and memorized Goethe's Faust. He got a job in Paris working for Continental Edison, but instead of compensating him for his inventions, the company gave him the "run around". Tesla resigned, sold all he had, and went to America to meet Thomas Edison [58]. Tesla arrived in 1884, with 4 cents, but with an introduction to Edison.

For reasons which may never been understood, Tesla never married, gave away his most lucrative patents, and refused the Nobel Prize. It is not sufficient to say he was an "individualist" or "eccentric". The fact is, he was socially competent among all classes--treating people with respect and kindness [281,ff]. He spoke six languages fluently. Yet, he lived, worked and dined essentially alone [284]. He had did not require 'stimulants' -- drink or drugs -- but he had crippling phobias [292-93].

The author concludes, not with his death--peacefully at age 84--but with the love story of Tesla's life, described as "the manifestation of these united forces of love and spirituality" resulting in a "fantastic situation, probably without parallel in human annals" [316]. The author distorts the scientific atheism of Tesla into a misunderstanding of the symbolism of "the Dove". ( )