Overview

Incredible escapes, fantastic sleight-of-hand-Houdini's most challenging performances are dramatically portrayed in Houdini's Fabulous Magic. Walter Gibson, co-author, was in close touch with Harry Houdini for a number of years before his death and worked with the master magician in preparing material for the book. It is with the aid of Houdini's own scrapbooks and notes that this book was written. The spectacular highlights of Houdini's career are described-and explained-here. Included are the famous escapes: escapes from a padlocked milk can filled with water; from locked jail cells; from a water-filled Chinese torture cell while suspended upside down; from packing cases weighted under water. Again, in this book, Houdini walks through a brick wall, vanishes a 10,000-pound elephant and is buried alive. Once more, Houdini and his wife Bessie mysteriously exchange places in a locked trunk-in three seconds! And Houdini the man is not ignored. His impact on the world in the early years of the twentieth century was enormous. He was a public hero who, in his own way, helped sweep out the cobwebs of nineteenth-century thinking. While doing so, he distinguished himself as a patriot, writer, collector of magic, aviator, movie idol, philanthropist, and crusader against fraudulent spiritualistic practices. This is a technical manual for magicians, complete with illustrations and diagrams, but it is also an astute analysis of the best of Houdini's magic and a readable biography of a man who turned himself into a legend. It is a book for would-be conjurers, for professional necromancers, for those curious about the methods and means of one of the most enchanting men of our century.

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9786188607781

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Reviews

""I've loved this book for sixty years. My first copy was borrowed from the Philadelphia Public Library when I was fourteen, and I kept renewing the loan till I could afford to own my own copy. Houdini's Fabulous Magic has just the right blend of history, technical secrets, and romance to fire the passion of a young magician. Four pieces of the Penn & Teller repertoire were directly inspired by Houdini's Fabulous Magic-four times more than any other book in my library."" Teller of Penn & Teller

I've loved this book for sixty years. My first copy was borrowed from the Philadelphia Public Library when I was fourteen, and I kept renewing the loan till I could afford to own my own copy. Houdini's Fabulous Magic has just the right blend of history, technical secrets, and romance to fire the passion of a young magician. Four pieces of the Penn & Teller repertoire were directly inspired by Houdini's Fabulous Magic-four times more than any other book in my library. Teller of Penn & Teller

"""I've loved this book for sixty years. My first copy was borrowed from the Philadelphia Public Library when I was fourteen, and I kept renewing the loan till I could afford to own my own copy. Houdini's Fabulous Magic has just the right blend of history, technical secrets, and romance to fire the passion of a young magician. Four pieces of the Penn & Teller repertoire were directly inspired by Houdini's Fabulous Magic-four times more than any other book in my library."" Teller of Penn & Teller"

Author Information

Walter Brown Gibson (1897-1985) was an American author and professional magician best known for his work on the pulp fiction character The Shadow. Gibson, under the pen-name Maxwell Grant, wrote ""more than 300 novel-length"" Shadow stories, writing up to ""10,000 words a day"" to satisfy public demand during the character's golden age in the 1930s and 1940s. Dr. Morris Young (1909-2002) had a passion for magic. A successful eye surgeon, Dr. Young was also very interested in the art of magic and the skill of mnemonics, or memory by association. To that end, he amassed one of the largest book collections on magic ever assembled. With his friend, New York attorney John McManus, he collected more than 20,000 items, some dating back to the 16th century. In 1955, they donated the collection to the Library of Congress. The McManus-Young Collection is today an invaluable resource for magic research. Gabe Fajuri is an associate editor of Magic, the world's leading trade journal for magicians. He also publishes scholarly titles on the subject of conjuring. He lives in Chicago.

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