WIZARD: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF NIKOLA TESLA Biography of a Genius

Every time you pick up the TV remote, you’re indebted to the electrical engineering genius of Nikola Tesla (1856-1943). He championed alternating current while the world was in love with Thomas Edison, who harnessed the less efficient direct current. Tesla is largely forgotten today, but this book will help restore his reputation. Simon Prebble offers a solid reading of this sometimes excruciatingly detailed work. The author uses extensive first-person and contemporary reports. Prebble gives aural clues to these passages by affecting a kind of generic American accent when quoting Edison, George Westinghouse, and others. But he’s less successful in differentiating the words of Tesla, a Croatian-born Serb. Occasionally, listeners will be nearly at the end of a passage before realizing they’re hearing Tesla's words and not the author’s. R.C.G. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine [Published: JANUARY 2012]