Carlson has written a serious rigorous book grounded in the academic history of technology
but also a page-turner that any fan of Tesla will enjoy.--Robert MacDougall Western University
Nikola Tesla like one of his oscillators flickered between different states so quickly that
they can easily blur. Carlson captures this extraordinary contradictory life--inventor
futurist visionary showman and at times ranting narcissist. We get to see how Tesla
scrambled like mad built with ambition and in his later efforts failed monumentally. Here is
a book that guides us through this wild ride with empathy and without hagiography.--Peter
Galison Harvard University Combining archival research with the latest scholarship from the
history of technology Carlson has written the balanced scholarly biography that Nikola Tesla
has long deserved. This is the definitive study of his life and work.--David E. Nye University
of Southern Denmark Most biographies of Tesla lack technical background and are uncritical and
adulatory in their approach. Carlson's perspective as a historian--particularly a historian of
technology--is indispensable for understanding Tesla's place in the rapidly changing American
society of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His style is engaging and
accessible and the book will clearly be of value to the historical community.--Bernard S. Finn
curator emeritus Smithsonian Institution Tesla is a tour de force of scholarship and analysis.
This is the definitive work on Tesla that brings to light much new information about his life
his inventions and the changing socioeconomic context in which he worked. Carlson has mined
the primary sources to an unprecedented depth and breadth. The book is nothing less than
extraordinary.--Michael Brian Schiffer author of Power Struggles: Scientific Authority and the
Creation of Practical Electricity before Edison
