What the Critics Say About Wizard

It was Seifer’s…intention to bring…Tesla’s…major scientific and technological contributions…together. He has done a very impressive job collecting a massive amount of documentation of original and secondary sources…The letters in the J.P. Morgan collection, in particular, shed considerable new light on Tesla’s connection with Morgan and his contemporaries.

—Nature

The best chapter in Seifer’s book describes late 19th century science fiction and locates Tesla’s projects among other predictions of the future…Seifer is [also] good at describing Tesla’s lack of practical, economic and personal judgment and the way his enormous ego invited unscrupulous partners…

—Washington Post Book World

Seifer paints a picture of Tesla that anyone familiar with the life of someone such as Orson Welles will recognize. Here was a man who peaked early, traveled in famous company…and started believing his own press hype. That made him spend the rest of his life trying to score another universe-changing coup…Wizard does a pretty good job of placing Tesla within the firmament of inventors, thinkers, and futurists. With Seifer’s scholarship to build on, anyone reconstructing those dizzy years of invention and litigation at the turn of the century would be foolish to try and leave out Nikola Tesla.

—Winston-Salem NC Journal

Despite Tesla’s impact on electricity, history does not regard him as highly as many of his inventive contemporaries…As Seifer shows in great detail…Tesla’s story is complicated and tests our definition of science…Where does someone like Tesla fit it?

—MIT’s Technology Review

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

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. The book brings together, into a cohesive whole, the many complex facets of the personal and technical life of the “wizard” who stands alongside Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse as another great implementor and inventor…Highly recommended.