[.ca] Tesla: Man Out of Time (ISBN 0743215362)

Tesla: A sad and amazing tale:
I agree with what the other reviewer wrote. About the Tesla book as not focusing on Tesla very much. However, I felt that Cheney was trying to tell us that Tesla didn't 'want' to be known at all. The times that Tesla opened up to america, were to see american corporations clamp down on him and his ideas.... so Tesla became even more the introvert than before.... While yes, his letters to people are opening a little bit, they are quite sad, how he came to love pigeons more than people at the end of his life. Animals never tried to hurt him emotionally or finacially, so he spent all his time with them. The science could have been deeper but I was not a science major so it was at a perfect level for me as a reader of literature. Perhaps it could have had a middle chapter titled, "Deep science" and most readers could be given the heads up about it, so they could skip it if they wished to. However the main thrust of the book was to enlighten the reader as to how recluse Tesla was and how sad his letters got even though he changed the face of american science more so than Edison did. I was shocked when the US Military did not take his genius and put him to work in some hidden base somewhere. But then they probably had a less budget then compared to today. Anyway, it was a great read on the long drive to Baja Mexico from Idaho. Jonathan M

More than an inventor!:
After reading this book, the whole way of understanding what the human mind is changed for me. One of the most important things I have ever read in my life came from this very book, when Tesla is quoted saying this: "Nothing enters our minds or determines our actions which is not directly or indirectly a response to stimuli beating opon our sense organs from without. Owing to the similarity of our construction and the sameness of our environment, we respond in like manner to similar stimuli, and from the concordance of our reactions, understanding is born. In the course of ages, mechanisms of infinite complexity are developed, but what we call "soul" is nothing more than the sum of the functionings of the body. When this functioning ceases, the "soul" ceases likewise." As you can see, this book is so much more than just about some inventor and his amazing gadgets that created sparks! My second favorite quote from this book is this: "There is no conflict between the ideal of religion and the ideal of science, but science is opposed to theological dogmas because science is founded on fact. The universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and will never end." Here we can see Tesla was way before his time knowing back then what most scientists today don't know. This book really shows you a man born way before his time.

You may be shocked by this remarkable account of Tesla's life:
Nikola Tesla was an inventor who lived around a hundred years ago. He was perhaps the foremost electrical genius of his time. Everybody remembers Tommy Edison better, but the truth is that Tesla was probably the smarter man. While he has been forgotten, his inventions are all around us. The AM radio you listen to when driving to work? Tesla. The alternating current (AC) electrical system that you plug things into at your house? Not possible without a host of inventions from Tesla. The fluorescent lighting in your office? Tesla helped develop them. The toy radio controlled boat you play with on Saturdays? Tesla built the first one. He even laid out a design for radar decades before the first one was built. One his best remembered inventions was the "Tesla Coil." He actually designed a number of different versions of these devices which are used take electricity and increase the frequency and voltage. Tesla had several ideas about how the coil could be used that included radio signals and wireless power transmission. When a Tesla coil is running it can produce impressive electrical show with sparks, and corona discharges. A giant coil built at Tesla's Colorado laboratory was capable of creating sparks 135 feet in length. As Tesla aged his inventions seem to become less and less practical. One of Tesla's last ideas was a charged particle beam. Such as "death ray," if built, would have been capable of downing airplanes or destroying objects at a distance. Though no death ray was ever built during Tesla's lifetime, both the U.S. and the USSR spent quit a bit of money trying to get it to work during the cold war. Tesla: Man Out Of Time by Margaret Cheney captures the legacy and accounts of a brilliant inventor's rewarding and troublesome life. Margaret Cheney gives a thorough and complete account of his life, from the experiments and ideas to the parties and social letters. A excellent book for anyone who isn't familiar with the scientific aspects of modern electrical engineering and wants a accurate explanation of Tesla's works. Help raise awareness; support cancer research!

Disappointing:
Already knowing something about Tesla's eccentric character I was excited to read this book. However, I soon found it confusing, poorly writen, and very easy to put down. Tesla himself is an interesting character who perhaps doesn't get the credit he deserves and his story should be told. He was largely responsible for our advances using alternating current, better understanding of electricity, and he also produced many other inventions. Some of his inventions fell more to the theoretical as opposed to practical side but there can be no doubt that he was a veritable intellect. The problem with Cheney is the book focuses too much on other people instead of Tesla and very little in the way of describing the history of Tesla as a man or of Tesla's character is expounded upon in this book. Instead we are given a bunch of little episodes about Tesla interspersed with droning technical detail. This was supposed to be a biography and not a technical journal. As an example allow me to post part of one of her paragraphs: *The relevance of ball lightning to fusion research has to do with the problem of confining plasma. The heart of the most common type of experimental fusion reaction involves taking isotopic hydrogen gas and both accelerating and superheating it until the hydrogen nuclei fuse to make helium nuclei, releasing, in the process, staggering amounts of energy. Along the way, while the hydrogen is being charged with vast amounts of kinetic and thermal energy, it enters an imperfectly understood material state known as plasma* Now, boy doesn't that make for compelling reading! Besides these rather boring technical interludes the book does have a middle section with photographs and smidgets of insight which help prevent making the book a complete waste. Perhaps, most irritatingly to me was the way Cheney was disorganized and bounced around in time. It was hard to tell if she was talking about the younger or the older Tesla and if she was discussing something that already happened or that was occuring later in his life. Anyway, this is a shame because Tesla is without doubt someone worth studying but based on the things I've mentioned I would have to suggest a different biography.

An insightful and well written book:
Tesla was an fascinating but often overlooked historical figure His inventions are still the basis of all major electrical power systems around the world. His later work often seemed fanciful/extravagent though -- perhaps prone to hyperbole in order to attract investors, he seemed to be facinated by very high voltage electricity. This books does a fine job of summarizing the character and work of "the great man" and reveals many -- but not all -- of the mysteries surrounding him. Recommended to those interested in history, invention, engineering or science.