Several reviewers have pronounced this book the definitive biography of Tesla because the author is himself a professor of science and technology, and an engineer. I had some trepidation approaching this material, fascinated though I am by Nikola Tesla, but it is written in a very accessible style.

Tesla was a Serbian who was fluent in five languages, and who did most of his best inventing in America. Besides the present automotive company bearing his name, Tesla has become something of a hero in modern times for his groundbreaking ideas about free energy and even communications with outer space. But he was known primarily as the discoverer and inventor of Alternating Current, and many of the early applications of wireless technology which today are at the basis of radios, televisions, and cellular phones.

Not all of his inventions became successful. A brilliant genius, he was nevertheless somewhat eccentric and idealistic even to a fault. His life history had many extreme turns in which he made millions of dollars, lost everything (several times), died in poverty, and even obscurity, until he was "resurrected" after his death in 1943, his life having spanned the late 1800s when the primary discoveries of electromagnetism were being brought forward.

Tesla had relationships during his life with George Westinghouse and Thomas Edison (with whom he had an intense rivalry called The Battle of the Currents, because Edison had based all of his empire on DC - direct current - which was limited, whereas Tesla's perseverance overcame Edison's money and entrenched network to forge the far-better technology - AC current - which was cheaper and able to reach greater distances). He also had a relationship with J.P. Morgan amongst many others. Towards the end of his life, it was a great disappointment to him that Morgan withdrew his financial support when Morgan learned that Tesla's dream of wireless technology would not result in profit for himself. Tesla never understood that type of thinking. Idealistic and humanitarian, he always sought to benefit humanity with his discoveries, and to reflect in his equipment the workings of the natural universe. But, of course, this was not the thinking in the days of the great fortunes that were sought and made by people like Morgan, Rockefeller and so forth. The profit motive was more important to them than serving the energy needs of global humanity.

Nikola Tesla was an odd duck, with a difficult life. At the same time that I was reading his biography, an issue of Dell Horoscope with an article on this visionary inventor arrived in my mailbox. I was able to see aspects in Tesla's horoscope that explained some of his story that author Carlson could not fully fathom. For instance, Tesla had an aspect indicating that he was psychic (Neptune in Pisces), and indeed he received many of his ideas as visions, but never acknowledged them as being given from a higher source; he explained them simply as the cogitations of his imagination triggered by a logical series of events.

Tesla's mind was unique in that he could receive concepts as visions, and then use deductive logic and a process of discipline - imaginative experiments - to fine-tune the machine or invention before he ever built it. He learned this technique when he was bedridden with cholera for a year in childhood and was forced to go inwards. As the author explains, some of his values might have been based upon his Orthodox Church faith which his father, a priest (non-celibate in that religion), sought to foist upon him.

Tesla's horoscope reveals an individual whose intense nature had many ups and downs emotionally, psychologically and also actually. He demonstrated his ideas by dramatically using his hands or his whole body to create a current, or show sparks, and even glow. His brilliance excited many others to investigate electromagnetic waves, leading to many current inventions and running many modern motors, but he himself had a tough life. As a genius and an outsider, he could never quite adjust to the fact that the world sometimes did not wish to conform to his ideal visions, and he wasn't ready to conform to it. However, he was able successfully to challenge the status quo.

The author reaches the conclusion that, because of his personal charisma and efforts to develop his willpower as a boy, and perhaps even his interest in psychic phenomena, Tesla has become a heroic figure to the New Age. "Much of Tesla's tale can be interpreted as spiritual enlightenment and personal development."

If you are interested in reading more about this brilliant and odd figure of recent history who so much influences our world, I could recommend this book. Personally, I skipped over the very technical stuff but was able to get a lot of the human interest story out of it.

As a footnote, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motor (the electric car company) has recently announced the release of many patents regarding the Tesla electric motor for the benefit of humankind's development of this alternative, non-fossil fuel energy, in the hopes of helping Planet Earth. This is very much in keeping with Tesla, the idealistic humanitarian, and we should applaud this bold move, a different angle regarding the strict profit-seeking motivation of the last century.