Review
------
"Seifer's vivid, revelatory, exhaustively researched
biography rescues pioneer inventor Nikola Tesla from cult status
and restores him to his rightful place as a principal architect
of the modern age." ---Publishers Weekly Starred Review
"[Wizard] brings the many complex facets of [Tesla's] personal
and technical life together in to a cohesive whole.... I highly
recommend this biography of a great technologist." --A.A. Mullin,
U.S. Army Space and Strategic Defense Command, COMPUTING REVIEWS
"[Along with A Beautiful Mind] one of the five best biographies
written on the brilliantly disturbed." --WALL STREET JOURNAL
"Wizard is a compelling tale presenting a teeming, vivid world
of science, technology, culture and human lives." --NEW SCIENTIST
"Marc Seifer is an excellent writer and scholar, who has
produced a wonderfully readable and illuminating biography of one
of the most intriguing men of this century... mak[ing] us
understand not only the man, but also the times in which he
lived. . . . [A] masterpiece." --NELSON DEMILLE
"The author presents much new material... [and] bases his book
on a large number of archival and primary sources.... Underneath
the layers of hero worship, the core of Seifer's book is a
serious piece of scholarship." --Ronald Kline, SCIENTIFIC
AMERICAN
"Seifer has done a remarkable job going through all the Tesla
manuscripts... ferret[ing] out hundreds of newspaper and magazine
articles in which he traces out Tesla's public image [and] offers
a reasonable reconstruction of Tesla's emotional world. . . .
Seifer has significantly advanced our understanding of Tesla."
--Bernard Carlson, author of Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical
Age, for ISIS
"It is my opinion that Dr. Seifer leads the world as the most
authoritative of all the Tesla researchers." --J.W. McGINNIS,
President, International Tesla Society
"Far and away the best job among Tesla biographies." --Jeffrey
D. Kooistra, INFINITE ENERGY
"Wizard is ... utterly absorbing with chapters charting all
stages of Tesla's life.... Seifer treats his prodigious subject
with sympathy and realism." --NEXUS
"Wizard... presents a much more accurate... picture of Tesla....
[It] is thorough, informative, entertaining and a valuable
addition to electrotechnological history, past and future."
--ELECTRONIC ENGINEERING TIMES
"In modern times, Tesla may be enjoying a comeback thanks to
books like Wizard." --THE NEW YORK TIMES
"Here is a deep and comprehensive biography of a great engineer
of early electrical science. Indeed, it is likely to become the
definitive biography of the Serbian-American inventor Nikola
Tesla. .... Highly recommended." --AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE
ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE
From Publishers Weekly:
Seifer's vivid, revelatory, exhaustively researched biography
rescues pioneer inventor Nikola Tesla from cult status and
restores him to his rightful place as a principal architect of
the modern age. Based largely on firsthand documents including
Tesla's writings, his patents and those of competitors, it
credits the Croatian-born Serb, who moved to New York in 1884,
with the invention of the induction motor, long-distance
electrical power distribution, fluorescent and neon lights, the
first true radio tube and remote control, besides making vital
contributions to the technology underlying television, wireless
communication, robotics, lasers, the facsimile machine and
particle-beam weaponry anticipating the space-based "Star Wars"
defensive shield. Though often depicted as a recluse, flamboyant
nouveau-riche Tesla (1856-1943) lived in Manhattan's
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel for two decades, and hobnobbed with
architect Sanford White, Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling,
conservationist John Muir, mogul John Jacob Astor III, Swami
Vivekananda. Yet the electronic wizard, who competed fiercely
with Marconi and with his one-time employer Edison, became
swamped in debt, abandoned by a world he helped create, ending
his days in seedy poverty, a bitter, anorexic eccentric obsessed
with feeding pigeons and avoiding germs. Seifer, who teaches
psychology at Community College of Rhode Island, attributes
Tesla's downfall partly to his megalomaniacal, neurotic,
self-destructive tendencies, partly to a quagmire of litigation
and also to his Faustian pact with his ambivalent benefactor,
Wall Street financier J. Pierpont Morgan, to whom he relinquished
control of several patents. Morgan, suggests Seifer, stymied
Tesla's visionary scheme for a global, wireless
power-distribution system because, if realized, it would
jeopardize electrical, lighting and telephone monopolies. Seifer
provides the fullest account yet of Tesla as an entrepreneur,
experimental physicist and inventor.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. Boxed & Starred
Review
From Library Journal:
Nikola Tesla is credited by many as the inventor of radio and
should have received most of the credit for the development of
modern electricity. Yet there is considerable confusion about his
technical contributions and even more about his personal life.
This book, by a professor of psychology at Bristol Community
College and a member of the International Tesla Society,
painstakingly documents Tesla's wide-ranging contributions. Born
in Croatia, Tesla emigrated to the United States in 1884 and
almost immediately began work on alternatives to what was then
accepted as standard electrical technology. This brought him into
conflict with Edison and later Westinghouse. The pattern of
conflict continued for nearly 60 years, partially because Tesla
was far ahead of his time, partially because he was erratic and
off-beat, and partially because he was not an astute business
partner. Seifer has analyzed extensive sources, many not
previously used by other Tesla biographers, to provide a detailed
interpretation of his life, but the fact that he also
incorporates extensive handwriting analysis to arrive at several
of his conclusions will certainly cause some reader concern. For
larger science and biography collections.?Hilary Burton, Lawrence
Livermore National Lab., Livermore, Cal.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --
From Booklist:
What kind of genius can hom the mysteries of electromagnetism
but cannot keep corporate lawyers from taking him to the
cleaners? Perhaps because his life did not culminate in wealth
and accl, Nikola Tesla has largely slipped from the national
memory. Seifer's biography rescues him from oblivion, bringing
back to life the amazingly creative intellect that gave us
fluorescent lighting, wireless communication, cheap electrical
power, and the remote control. But Seifer also resurrects the
wounded, self-destructive personality who never recovered from
the loss of a favored older brother and who spiraled into weird
obsessions, mental collapse, and poverty as he watched other men
use his inventions to win fame and riches. Seifer does an
admirable job of explaining his subject's technical feats and
analyzing his psychological idiosyncrasies. Tinged with pathos,
this meticulously researched biography deserves attention from
all who would understand the human tragedies played out in the
shadows of our neon culture.
Bryce Christensen --
About the Author
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A graduate of the University of Chicago and Saybrook
University, Marc J. Seifer, Ph.D., is a retired psychology
teacher from Roger Williams University. A handwriting expert who
has testified in state and federal court, Dr. Seifer has lectured
at West Point Academy, Brandeis University, the United
Nations, the Open Center in New York, LucasFilms Industrial Light
& Magic, at Oxford University and Cambridge University in
England, and at conferences in Canada, Israel and Croatia and for
the Serbian Academy of Sciences.
His articles have appeared in Wired, Civilization, The
Historian, Psychiatric Clinics of North America and Cerebrum.
Featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall
Street Journal, The Economist and Scientific American, Dr. Seifer
has also appeared on Coast to Coast Radio, NPR's "All Things
Considered," "The Morning Show" in Canberra Australia, on the
BBC, and on TV on American Experience, The History Channel, and
Associated Press International.
Listed in Marquis' Who's Who in the World, he is also the author
of the novels Rasputin's Nephew, Doppelgänger, Crystal Night, and
e Line, and the non-fiction works Transcending the Speed of
Light, The Definitive Book of Handwriting Analysis, and Framed!
Murder, Corruption & a Death Sentence in Florida. His book
Wizard: The Life & Times of Nikola Tesla has been translated into
nine languages including Serbian, Russian and Chinese.