Tired of the same old ghouls
and goblins? Did you know that October 23-31, 2004 is National
Magic Week? Coinciding with the anniversary of famed magician
Harry Houdini’s death, this celebration of illusion,
prestidigitation, and escapology highlights the entertainment
benefits of magic and encourages children of all ages to
practice their sleight of hand. If you want to learn more about
the tricks and the tricksters, then head to your library before
these books disappear.
Nonfiction
Houdini! : the career of
Ehrich Weiss : American self-liberator, Europe's eclipsing
sensation, world's handcuff king & prison breaker--nothing on
Earth can hold Houdini a prisoner
Silverman, Kenneth
In the most comprehensive biography written about the great
illusionist yet, author Ken Silverman draws on never-before-used
scrapbooks, personal diaries, court transcripts and hundreds of
unpublished notes and letters collected from around the world to
reveal a far richer, more personal view of Houdini than ever
before. He explores Houdini's many friendships with politicians
and celebrities like Jack Dempsey, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas
Edison, Jack London, the Astors and others. He looks into his
traumatic encounters with anti-Semitism; his close-knit family;
his strange and troubled relationship with Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle; and his bitter war against spiritualism.
Conjuring
Randi, James
Drawing on histories, documents and his own contacts, "The
Amazing Randi,'' a magician also known for his work unmasking
fraudulent psychics, here provides a broad history of magic and
its performers. Beginning with tales of Egypt and India, Randi
discusses such ancient tricks as the Cups & Balls routine and
the role of machines like the automaton. He traces the careers
of performers "Chung Ling Soo'' (an early 20th-century conjurer
who was not in fact Chinese but a disguised American), the
famous Blackstone and Houdini.
The complete idiot's guide
to magic tricks
Ogden, Tom
Ogden explains all the basics of stage presentation and moves on
to clear, concise details of how to perform tricks involving
cards, ropes, balls, coins, rubber bands, and other objects.
The jumbo book of card
tricks & games
Barry, Sheila Anne
From slapjack to sleights-of-hand, The Jumbo Book of Card Tricks
& Games by Sheila Anne Barry, Bob Longe, William Moss and Alfred
Sheinwold has card lovers covered. This thick guide contains
more than 150 amusing activities. Trick tips, a glossary and an
index that rates games and tricks by difficulty level are
included.
Hiding the elephant : how
magicians invented the impossible and learned to disappear
Steinmeyer, Jim
The success of a magician "lies in making a human connection to
the magic." Create an illusion in the audience's mind, and
they're hooked. But to understand magicians, we need to
understand the art of that creation. Steinmeyer, who has
designed illusions for Siegfried and Roy and David Copperfield,
presents a cultural history of magic's golden age (from the
1890s to the 1930s), some legendary tricks (including the
Levitation of Princess Karnak and Harry Houdini's Disappearing
Elephant) and the fierce rivalries that dominated the craft.
Mysterious stranger : a
book of magic
Blaine, David, 1973-
"Mysterious Stranger" allows readers to bring Blaine's magic
directly into their minds, demonstrating his belief that "you
don't get into magic, magic gets into you." In the book are
secrets of mind-bending magic that readers can learn to do for
themselves and Blaine's perspective on what the art of magic is.
Fiction
David Copperfield's tales
of the impossible
Copperfield, David
A collection that includes, among other stories, a military tale
from Larry Bond, a creepy puppet yarn by Joyce Carol Oates, an
excerpt from an unfinished novel by the late comic-book artist
Jack Kirby and the first published story by master
prestidigitator Copperfield promises to be jarring, eclectic or
just plain odd.
Caravan
Gilman, Dorothy
The author of the Mrs. Pollifax mysteries applies her talents to
romance and danger in this entertaining tale of a young American
woman's unexpected adventures in Africa during the early years
of WW I. Raised in a circus by her widowed mother (the headless
woman) and fortune-telling Grams, who teaches her to juggle and
pick pockets, Caressa Horvath is sent to a Boston finishing
school, which she leaves after she is caught lifting the wallet
of world traveler Jacob Bowman. Capturing his heart, she marries
him shortly before they embark for Tripoli, where they assemble
a caravan and set off into the Sahara.
The amazing adventures of
Kavalier and Clay : a novel
Chabon, Michael
Chabon's prodigious gifts for language, humor and wonderment
come to full maturity in this fictional history of the legendary
partnership between Sammy Klayman and Josef Kavalier, cousins
and creators of the prewar masked comic book hero, The Escapist.
Sammy is a gifted inventor of characters and situations who
dreams "the usual Brooklyn dreams of flight and transformation
and escape." Joe Kavalier, a former Prague art student, arrives
in Brooklyn by way of Siberia, Japan and San Francisco. This
improbable route marks only the first in a lifetime of timely
escapes. Denied exit from Nazi Czechoslovakia with the visa his
family sold its fortune to buy him, Joe, a disciple of Houdini,
enlists the aid of his former teacher, the celebrated stage
illusionist Bernard Kornblum, in a more desperate escape:
crouched inside the coffin transporting Prague's famous golem,
Rabbi Loew's miraculous automaton, to the safety of exile in
Lithuania.
Carter beats the Devil : a
novel
Gold, Glen David
Set against the backdrop of early 20th-century San Francisco
during the heyday of such legendary illusionists and escape
artists as Harry Houdini, this thoroughly entertaining debut by
an amateur magician with an M.F.A. in creative writing is a
fanciful pastiche of history, fantasy and romance. The plot
turns around the questionable circumstances surrounding
scandal-beleaguered President Warren Harding's unexpected death
on August 2, 1923, shortly after appearing on stage with the
magician Carter the Great in San Francisco.
The Houdini Girl
Bedford, Martyn
Few authors have plumbed the metaphor that love is magic as
thoroughly as British author Bedford does in his intricately
structured, cleverly compelling second novel. Indeed, truth and
lies, illusion and reality, are the substance of this work. The
narrator is an Oxford-based magician who calls himself Peter
Prestige the Prodigious Prestidigitator (he was christened
Fletcher Clark, aka Fletcher Brandon and better known as Red).
In a bar one night, Red falls for Killarney-born tough girl Rosa
Kelly; she moves in with him the next day. Less than a year
later, she dies in a freak accident. In chapters that alternate
between past and present, two narratives unfold side by side:
the love story of Red and Rosa, and the events behind Rosa's
gruesome and mysterious death under the wheels of a train.
Posted: 4/16/04
