He was an acute germaphobe who never shook hands and required nine napkins when he sat down to dinner.

Born during a lightning storm at midnight, Tesla died alone in a New York City hotel. Who was this genius? Drawing on letters, technical notebooks, and other primary sources, Munson pieces together the magnificently bizarre personal life and mental habits of the enigmatic inventor.

His ideas have lived on to shape the modern economy. In the early 1900s, he designed plans for cell phones, the Internet, death-ray weapons, and interstellar communications. Although penniless during his later years, he never stopped imagining. His most advanced ideas went unrecognized for decades: forty years in the case of the radio patent, longer still for his ideas on laser beam technology. Unfortunately, he had little business sense and could not capitalize on this success. When his first breakthrough-alternating current, the basis of the electric grid-pitted him against Thomas Edison's direct-current empire, Tesla's superior technology prevailed. In Tesla, Richard Munson presents a comprehensive portrait of this farsighted and underappreciated mastermind. His electric induction motors run our appliances and factories, yet he has been largely overlooked by history. Clear, authoritative, and highly readable, Tesla takes into account all the phases of Tesla’s remarkable life and career.Nikola Tesla invented the radio, robots, and remote control. Drawing on letters, technological notebooks, and other primary sources, Munson pieces together the magnificently bizarre personal life and mental habits of the enigmatic inventor whose most famous inventions were the product of a mind fueled by both the humanities and sciences - Tesla conceived the induction motor while walking through a park and reciting Goethe’s Faust.

His ideas have lived on to shape the modern economy, yet he has been largely overlooked by history. In the early 1900s, he designed plans for cell phones, the Internet, death-ray weapons, and interstellar communication. His electric induction motors run our appliances and factories.

Nikola Tesla invented radio, robots, and remote control.

Tesla by Richard Munson