Well-documented information about this inventor abounds in a readable volume. Aldrich covers Tesla s early life in Croatia, his academic brilliance and social awkwardness, his longterm battle with Thomas Edison over alternating current, his uneasy alliance with George Westinghouse, his chronic financial difficulties, and his personal idiosyncrasies. Photos and sidebars of explanations (not all clear) extend the text. Presents the life and accomplishments...

"Born at the stroke of midnight during a lightning storm, Nikola Tesla grew up to become one of the most important electrical inventors in the world. But before working with electricity, he was a child who loved playing with the animals on his family's farm in Serbia. An inventor since childhood, Tesla's patents encompassed everything from radar and remote-control technology to wireless communications. But his greatest invention was the AC induction...

"Nikola Tesla was a physicist, scientist, electrical engineer, and world-renowned inventor whose accomplishments faded into oblivion after his death in 1943. He was omitted from most history books, while his colleagues and competitors (including Thomas Edison and Guglielmo Marconi) and their successes are still remembered and celebrated. Tesla was undeniably eccentric and compulsive; some considered him to be somewhat of a "mad" scientist. But in...