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AS HE moulders away during his last, neglected years in an anonymous hotel room, , the neurotic Serbian-American inventor of radio and alternating current, finds himself haunted by a simple question: “If they are your patents, Niko, why did Marconi send a wireless letter across the ocean before you?”

Samantha Hunt’s fantasy comes closer than any biography to solving the riddle of Tesla’s commercial and personal failings. She writes not about his science, but about the sheer effort of imagination it takes to understand the world. Tesla had imagination in abundance. Long before others forgot him, he forgot himself, descending into a perfectionist fugue. Reading at times like a vampire story by Ayn Rand, The Invention of Everything Else is perfect for nights spent in the wrong hotel, once your travel plans have, as usual, gone subtly awry.