A LIFE ELECTRIC

A portrait of the remarkable inventor as inquisitive, clever, and kindhearted.

As a boy, Nikola Tesla lavished attention on his family’s many fowl and was astonished by static electricity produced by stroking his cat’s fur. Tesla’s passion for reading and interest in electricity led to his immigration to the United States to work with Thomas Edison. The description of Tesla’s sudden insight about alternating current is nicely handled, with a patent drawing on the facing page, and the Goethe poem that helped inspire him is included in the backmatter. Westergaard briefly recounts the contentious relationship between Tesla and Edison. Sardà’s comical illustration here has each genius perched on a pedestal, arms and legs flailing as they engage in furious argument. Sardà’s marvelous artwork includes borders and motifs suggesting art from what is now Croatia, Tesla’s homeland, while depictions of the Chicago exposition and the New York skyline employ the decorative art style of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. All the people in them are White. The financial arrangement with George Westinghouse that aided Tesla’s success at the Chicago world’s fair of 1893 later left him penniless. The loneliness and indignity of Tesla’s poverty in old age here is portrayed not so much as eccentricity but as the kindness of an elderly man toward city birds, a return to the simplicity of childhood. An extensive author’s note fills in the complex picture of Tesla’s life.

A fine introduction, handsomely illustrated.