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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Father of the Modern Age
Comment: Many people consider Nikola Tesla to be the greatest inventor of the modern age. I am not here to debate if he was greater than Edison. They were both great men, and in fact, as Dr. Seifer shows, they were also respectful competitors, with Tesla accepting the Edison Medal in 1917 as a measure of their complex relationship. You can look over the introduction above for a litany of Tesla's many achievements. But Tesla for me is more than just a great inventor; he was also concerned about the environment, humanity and world unity. Tesla's closest friends included Robert Underwood Johnson, editor of The Century Magazine the great poet and mountain man, John Muir, and Teddy Roosevelt who Muir brought to Yosemite to create that magnificent park and found, as a trio, the Sierra Club. Tesla's invention of our hydroelectric power system, since it is non-polluting and renewable, is the single most important technological achievement for slowing down global warming, because it replaced Edison's coal-operated air-polluting DC generators. Tesla worked with Stanford White, considered by many to be the greatest architect of the day whose magnificent buildings are still today some of the finest ever built in America, and Tesla formed a partnership with J. Pierpont Morgan, the most important financier of the 20th century. Yes, Morgan ultimately failed in supporting Tesla, but Seifer explains in detail this amazing relationship, a battle for the soul of the planet, wires or wireless, with Morgan, unfortunately in the short run, the winner. Tesla is credited as the spiritual father of the internet, his quote from 1904 about converting the entire planet into "a virtual brain as it were, able to feel in all its parts," certainly recognizes this extraordinary late 20th century hi-tech development. I have met Dr. Seifer on several occasions, and in fact sponsored him to appear as the keynote speaker to the 2005 annual meeting of the Professional Engineers of Ontario. Not only did Dr. Seifer present Tesla's life story in a cogent fashion, that is, explain his excellent book, he also did it to a standing only crowd with a riveting slide presentation. If you are looking for one book about one extraordinary transformational individual whose life and achievements have inspired so many, I highly recommend Wizard: The Life & Times of Nikola Tesla. It's a book to read and also give your children and friends.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent read if you want to know more about the man
Comment: I read through most of the reviews of this book, and find them, for the most part, dead on.
I did not buy it via Amazon (the horror!), but actually went to a bookstore looking for a book on Nikola Tesla, wanting to learn more about the fascinating individual.
After going through about 10 books by different authors, what made me choose this one was the sheer number of references the author used, including face to face interviews with people who knew Tesla.
The author uses a distinct timeline, which is a change from the other books I observed (such as Cheney's book), and also only used corroborative sources for his details, such as personal notes from Tesla, coorespondence, and so on.
If you are looking for a book on detailed explainations on his experiments, this is not the book for you. It is a highly detailed, personalized look at the man's life, mainly how someone so influential could be erased from common knowledge of history so effectively.
If you want details on his experiments, I recommend the book "The Fanastic Inventions of Nikola Tesla" : The Fantastic Inventions of Nikola Tesla (The Lost Science Series)
As a side note, I checked out the reviewers who gave this book one star and disparaged it. They tend to have only written one star reviews for everything. Don't let the one stars discourage you from reading this book and separating the myth from history.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Very good book
Comment: In my opinion this was a very good book about Tesla, but I must confess, I have not read any other biographies on him so I have nothing to compare it to. As others have stated, the book has lots of details about Tesla's personal life and his relationships with business associates like J.P. Morgan, Westinghouse, Edison, etc. Tesla was the primary architect of the twentieth century and yet he's practically been erased from the history books and the curriculums in the academic institutions. What does that tell you about the true purpose of "education" in this day and age (read the works of John Taylor Gatto, "Dumbing Us Down" and "The Underground History of American Education")?
Tesla was clearly a genius and anyone who says otherwise knows nothing about his accomplishments. Titans like J.P. Morgan became concerned about Tesla's intentions regarding the use of his wireless power transmisson, and other inventions. These corporate puppet masters don't want anything in the marketplace that they cannot wield complete control over. Free, wireless power transmission fell into this category. Tesla wanted to elevate humanity with his inventions, whereas Morgan (and others) wanted to gain greater control over humanity through technology. This is the same plight we are in today, in 2008, a hundred years later.
Tesla's work was by no means the only target for suppression. Those of you fascinated with Tesla will surely be fascinated with the discoveries of Albert Roy Davis and Walter C. Rawls, Jr. Tesla's emphasis was on electricity, while Davis and Rawls' was/is on magnetism.
Davis was the first scientist in the world to discover, in 1936, that magnetism consists of two separate and distinct energies, not one as it is still taught in colleges to this day (72 years later). Each pole has the opposite effect on all matter. Davis and Rawls found that North pole magnetism can not only eliminate diseases like cancer, it can be used to increase the intelligence of animals/people, extend the lifespans of animals/people, increase the growth of plants, make stronger metals/plastics and much more. The South pole has many uses as well.
I very highly recommend reading the books by Davis and Rawls titled, "Magnetism and Its Effects on the Living System", and "The Magnetic Blueprint of Life". You can find a new copy of the latter book on the Albert Roy Davis Research Lab website (only used copies are available on Amazon). All of their books are great reading, but those two are the most technical and will likely interest Tesla fans the most. You will definitely want to read the article written by Walter Rawls titled, "The Scope of Biomagnetism", on the Teslatech website too. Just type the title of the article on a search engine and you'll find it. Here is the indisputable scientific evidence for the "new physics" that we've all been searching for!
I've been told by a credible source that Tesla was involved in the Philedelphia Experiment and that he left it because he knew there were going to be problems. He was also working for RCA laboratories at the time of his death, not just feeding pigeons on a bench waiting for the big sleep.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Do not waste your Money
Comment: If you want to read a good biography of Nikola Tesla I would recommend you two books: Man out of Time or Nikola Tesla: A spark of genius...
Customer Rating:
Summary: Worst book on Tesla ever!
Comment: This is by all means the worst book on Nikola Tesla ever! This book portrays Tesla in a way that he never was, a confused lunatic with confused visions and a hard line nationalist attitude. It is no wonder that one reader nicknamed huh concluded that Tesla was stupid and was not able to finish most of his inventions (by the way, this guy sounds like someone from Edison's camp). Tesla was born in an environment of constant clashes between Croats and Serbs, and Ottoman empire (not "Asian barbarians" as this author constantly portrays this great Empire) had nothing to do with Tesla's departure to US. Teslas's father was orthodox priest (a hardliner) who wanted to see his son in the Serbian army (it is the same army who completely escaped into Greece which is unknown example of cowardice in the history and whose king also escaped to England leaving his nation to German mercy, thus Tesla did not see anything great in this "great army"). Tesla refused going to Serbian army and he refused being hard-line nationalist. Tesla once said:" I am proud of my country Croatia and my Serbian nationality". This indicates best that he was not hard-line nationalist (keep in mind that Serbian nationalist even today claim that Croatia is occupied Serbian territory and that it will be wiped off the map). This author actually invented many stories of Tesla's life and even more of them are from second or third hand, totally untrue.
On the technical aspect of this book it is not even worth any comments. Someone who does not know anything about electrical tech must be wondering, what the heck did this guy Tesla invent anyway (hence huh reader again)? I would describe the technical portion of this book as a good joke; even Mr. Bean would do it better. Author just could not sustain a certain hatred for Ottoman empire, which by the way was not much different then eg. Roman empire. Stay away from this book, you will not learn anything from it and could be infected with serious hate.
This book is a zero mark!
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