soft question - The work of Thurston

There are several sources for Thurston's hyperbolization theorem, some published, some not.

Off the top of my head:

1) M.Kapovich, Hyperbolic manifolds and discrete groups.

2) J. Hubbard's Teichmuller theory volume II (not yet published)

3) J. Morgan, H. Bass (eds). The Smith conjecture. (English)
Papers presented at the symposium held at Columbia University, New
York, 1979.
Pure and Applied Mathematics, 112.
Academic Press, Inc., Orlando, Fla., 1984. xv+243 pp.

For only the case of manifolds that fibre over S^1

1) J-P. Otal, The hyperbolization theorem for fibred 3-manifolds.

Of course there's also the new non-Thurston proofs using Ricci flow.

Oh, and regarding that anecdote about repelling people from a field -- I've only heard that comment attributed to one mathematician and it was in reference to Thurston's early work on foliations. I don't think that's a widely held belief, but I wasn't alive then so I'm just going on 2nd hand comments.