Prodigal Genius

Book excerpt: This highly detailed work captures Tesla as a scientist and as a public figure. The first, original full-length biography, first published in 1944 and long a favorite of Tesla fans, is a definitive biography of the man without whom modern civilization would not exist. His inventions on rotating magnetic fields creating AC current as we know it today, have changed the worldyet he is relatively unknown. This special edition of ONeills classic book has many rare photographs of Tesla and his most advanced inventions. Teslas eccentric personality gives his life story a strange romantic quality. He made his first million before he was forty, yet gave up his royalties in a gesture of friendship, and died almost in poverty. Tesla could see an invention in 3-D, from every angle, within his mind, before it was built how he refused to accept the Nobel Prize why Tesla clung to his theories of electricity in the face of opposition his friendships with Mark Twain, George Westinghouse and competition with Thomas Edison In this penetrating study of the life and inventions of a scientific superman, Nikola Tesla is revealed as a figure of genius whose influence on the world reaches into the far future.