Tesla

Nikola Tesla invented devices that had almost no theoretical precedent. Enemies branded him a madman, others saw a genius, and nearly everyone found him an enigma. This biography follows him from his childhood in Yugoslavia to his death in New York in the 1940s.

Margaret Cheney traces the scientific work first. Tesla discovered the rotating magnetic field, the basis of most alternating-current machinery, and he laid down fundamentals of robotics, computers and missile science. Some of his inventions transformed the world, and their effects continue today.

The man gets equal attention. Tesla was flamboyant and neurotic, troubled by a range of compulsions and phobias, and fond of extravagant, visionary experiments. He was also a popular figure about town, admired by people as different as Mark Twain and George Westinghouse, and adored by many society beauties.

This is non-fiction, a full-length life story that sets the inventions beside the obsessions and eccentricities of the person behind them. It suits readers who want both the science and the character, told in chronological order from boyhood to old age.