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by amirmansour 5048 days ago
I highly recommend Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla : Biography of a Genius. http://www.amazon.com/Wizard-Nikola-Biography-Genius-Citadel...
2 comments

A fantastic read. Don't miss the audiobook if you're into audiobooks (great for long commutes and if you're not English and want to improve it)[1].

It's read by Simon Prebble[2]. I absolutely love his voice. His 1984[3] is probably my favorite audiobook (I listen to audiobooks a lot).

He is great. From Wikipedia:

In the U.S., he also began narrating audio books,and to date (2012) has recorded well over 450 titles. As one of AudioFile Magazine's 'Golden Voices' and 'Best Voices of the Century', his work has gained him five 'Listen Up' awards, thirty 'Earphone' awards, and in 2005, he was named 'Narrator of theYear' by Publishers Weekly. Nominated fifteen times for the 'Audies' (the audiobook 'Oscars'), he was finally awarded a coveted 'Audie' in 2010, the year he was also named Booklist's 'Voice of Choice'.

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/Wizard-Times-Nikola-Biography-Genius/d...

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Prebble

[3]: http://www.amazon.com/1984-New-Classic-Edition/dp/B000Q6ZLOI

Simon Prebble's narration of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle is fantastic.
Really? That's fantastic. I have that audiobook and intended to listen to it in the coming weeks. But somehow I'd missed the narrator's name!

Thanks a lot. Now I can hardly wait for the book :)

It's a good book, but I am not sure if it's the book to read if you want to know even a little bit of the technical marvels he came up with. I found the book to be good enough to know the names of Tesla's inventions and who he was day-to-day, but not much more. Obviously if that's the main interest, this is a fine book.

On the other hand, if the idea is to learn more about his inventions, I'd recommend reading some of his own writing, e.g. Selected Tesla Writings: http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/contents.htm Lots of really amazing articles there. Check out this one, http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1900-06-00.htm , it's one of my favourites.