This biography is fascinating for the stories of this amazing inventor who deserves a much higher recognition for his electricity and communication creations, but it is more than the story of a great scientist and inventor, it is also the story of a Serbian who did not recognize the challenges of capitalism. It is about losing his inventions and fortune to Astor, Morgan, Marconi and Edison.
He was a man of great knowledge and amazing discovery, but his personality was his worst attribute. He did not know how to complete a project. He always found something to divert him before he completed the project that had been funded. He was captured by his own imagination and consequently he never made the impact he should have.
Actually his discoveries did make an impact, but only when they were pirated and put in to a fiscally sound project by someone else. It is an amazing, but in this case too long a book. I really enjoyed it, but the author needed to do what Tesla did not do - come to the conclusion. The repetition of Tesla's failures gets boring after a point. We can anticipate that each new and great discovery will result in his frustration with his backers.
Over and over he is bankrupt. His personal life is boring, he is a workaholic and the best we can see of other affections is with the pigeons that he feeds and develops a love for.
And yet we can sympathize with the backers who wanted him to do the one thing that they funded.
The conclusion of the book is my much increased respect for Tesla and his role in the electrical impact on our society and economy.
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