Customer Reviews

Lightning in His Hand, the Life-Story of Nikola Tesla

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In spite of previous comments, after twice reading Lightning in His Hand over the last 20 years, I find it to be the best available biography on Nikola Tesla. Neither Inez Hunt or Wanetta Draper pretend to be technical experts regarding electrical theory or electrical engineering. The life of Tesla is told chronologically from his early childhood in Smiljan, Croatia. The human side of this brilliant scientist and inventor unfolds poignantly and beautifully,with particular emphasis on his electrical experiments in Colorado at the beginning of the 20th century. Also included in this new edition are previously unpublished photographs provided by the Tesla Museum in Belgrade. Margaret Cheney, author of "Tesla: Man Out of Time", wrote to Inez Hunt in the early 1980s, praising "Lightning in His Hand", stating that she could never have written her book on Tesla without having Lightning's superb documentation, and praised Mrs. Hunt for having produced a book "beautifully written." Read this book, and judge for yourself. You will not be disappointed, and will come to know Tesla intimately

Nikola Tesla's life makes for interesting reading, and the best you can say about this book is that it has an interesting subject. Oh, and it has a nice front cover. If this book is the only one you read on Tesla, that's a pity, because this is a very bad book, being poorly written, organized, and edited. The authors clearly have almost no grasp of Tesla's technical accomplishments, but they don't let this stop them from attempting to cover them. The result are discussions of Tesla's inventions that are so vague and confusing that it's often hard to understand what the big deal is, or so obviously inaccurate as to be worse than useless. Or often, both. If that's not enough, even on non-technical details they are also prone to repeating themselves, to leaving obvious questions unanswered, and wandering from one topic to another like a leaf blowing on the wind.

This book was republished by the Pikes Peak Library District for the 2010 take on its annual "All Pikes Peak Reads" event. That's an unfortunate and rather dramatic mistake from what's otherwise a sterling institution. I have to assume that since the authors of this book were locals, the selection committee didn't think it necessary to actually read the book before proceeding.

Tesla was a unique person with an interesting life. If you're interested in learning about Tesla, look somewhere else. Anywhere, really, you could hardly do worse than to choose this book.

Tesla's contributions through his inventions are amazing toay although he was more than 100 years ahead of his time. What a great mind!