Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #49301 in Books
• Published on: 1983-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Customer Reviews

Misdirected
I had read recommendations saying that these tricks were easy to do -- and perhaps they are, if you're a wonder at sleight of hand and enjoy lots of preparing and folding and concealing and slipping things into secret panels and misdirecting and spouting old-timey magic act patter.

Most of the gimmicks are stagey and involve special props, so it's not just something you could do spontaneously. The steps are too involved and tedious for me. The font, verbiage and illustrations are very 1950s. ...Just checked the original copyright: 1944 -- and it looks like nothing's been updated since then. For example, the very first chapter is titled "Effects with Billets and Pellets"... what and what?! Whatever it is, it involves a lot of paper-folding and switching. Just not what I thought at all -- I was hoping for really straightforward cool, easy tricks.

Not what I was expecting, but still interesting
If you are looking for a book full of quick mental magic gags, this isn't very good. All the tricks in this book require either A) Advanced skills in slight of hand (palming, quick switches, etc) or B) A gimmicked apparatus. It isn't as easy as amazing your buddies at a party with some mind reading tricks. These are for more advanced magicians. It was also written in 1944.

That being said, it is a very interesting look into how some of this stuff is (or was) accomplished. I have seen several of these tricks used before and wondered how they were pulled off, now I know.

If you are a magician with basic skills in slight of hand, palming, and switching, then you will probably find some cool additions to your performance here.

If you are looking for some basic stuff to baffle your friends with, this is not the right book for you.

Needs an update
I was disappointed in this book after having read so many glowing reviews. I was surprised to discover that it was written in 1944. The archaic language is a bit distracting, the hand-drawn illustrations look very dated, and there is too much use of words where clear diagrams would have been better. A picture is worth a thousand words, and you can double that amount of words if the prose is written in such an old style. I wasn't even able to understand what the writer was trying to say in a lot of cases. I don't recommend this book for beginners.