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Reviewed by C.R. Hurst for Readers' Favorite
Nikola Tesla is perhaps best known as an inventor, having created many of the technologies that have helped make the modern world, such as the alternating current power system, the Tesla coil, and many other inventions in radio, fluorescent lights, and wireless communication. However, author Barbara Daddino’s Tesla’s Cottage takes a decidedly more personal approach to the inventor. In it, she shows readers an intimate perspective of the great Serbian known as “The Wizard” by combining research about his time on Long Island Sound with her acquisition of a cottage that he reportedly owned during the early 20th century. Part biography, part personal narrative, and part investigative journalism, Tesla’s Cottage offers an engaging and affecting look at one of history’s most misunderstood geniuses.
What I appreciated the most about the book is Barbara Daddino’s ability to recreate America’s Gilded Age and its preoccupation with wealth, with which Tesla, a man of science, often finds himself at odds, despite his need to acquire funds from robber barons such as J.P. Morgan. I also loved the descriptions of the Wardenclyffe retreat, where Tesla and other prominent intellectuals (women’s suffrage leader, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, for one) spent summers. There, Tesla hoped to establish a community of like-minded progressives and to create a laboratory where he could develop his radio communication system. In Tesla’s Cottage, Daddino herself creates a wonderful profile of a complex man in a magical place where he still inspires others with his intelligence, integrity, and creative energy. Highly recommended.
