The Best Academic Book/Biography on Nikola Tesla
Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age
By W. Bernard Carlson
Meticulously footnoted and diagrammed, this book is the definitive biography on Nikola Tesla. Written by W. Bernard Carlson, a professor of both engineering and history, this book interweaves the life of Tesla with scientific explanations pertaining to Tesla’s inventions.
The Best Popular Book/Biography on Nikola Tesla
Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla: Biography of a Genius
By Marc Seifer
This biography focuses more on the stories surrounding Tesla’s life. Seifer brings back to life Tesla’s relationships with prominent individuals such as Robert and Katharine Johnson, Mark Twain, John Jacob Astor, and J. P. Morgan through actual letters and reconstructed dialogs.
This book reads more like a novel but does not explain the science behind Tesla’s inventions as well as Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age.
Worthy Mentions
My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla
By Nikola Tesla
This is a short account (around 100 pages) in Tesla’s own words about his early life, first efforts in invention, later endeavors, the discovery of the Tesla Coil and Transformer, the Magnifying Transmitter”, and the art of Telautomatics.
Nikola Tesla 1856-1943: Lectures, Patents, Articles
By Nikola Tesla, published by Nikola Tesla Museum
Though interesting, this book is now something of a collectible because it is now out of print and its used copies currently sell for hundreds of dollars. According to Tesla’s will, his entire works (except those pertaining to the earliest period of his creative activity, which were lost when his laboratory was destroyed by fire) were archived in the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade, Serbia. The Nikola Tesla Museum was thus in a position to publish a compilation of Tesla’s works in 1956. The resultant book is some 800 pages of diagrams and explanations in Tesla’s own words of his inventions, along with articles and lectures.
Nikola Tesla: Lectures and Patents
By Nikola Tesla
This book contains the majority of the material complied in “Nikola Tesla 1856-1943: Lectures, Patents, Articles” and is a substitute for it that is obtainable at a reasonable cost as it is still in print.