Magic Tricks

It has often been said that mastering the magic in this book will make you an accomplished close-up and sleight-of-hand artist. In many ways it contains all the magic you need to build a professional caliber repertoire. Many have earned a living performing these routines and now you can too. If you have not read and learned the magic contained in this book you have no business calling yourself a close-up magician. The magic by John Scarne, Dai Vernon, Bert Allerton, S. Leo Horowitz, Emil Jarrow, Francis Carlyle, Dr. Jacob Daley, Tony Slydini, Ross Bertram, Nate Leipzig, and Max Malini helped shape the art of close-up magic as we know it.

In this first major book by one of the United States' most respected professionals, Eric Mead covers a wide range of magic and mentalism, drawn completely from his professional repertoire and fine-tuned by performance after performance to its present form.

A modern classic of close-up magic. Earl Nelson has compiled a beautiful collection of card, coin and finger-ring magic into this extraordinary volume.

A treatise on the body's role in deception. Juan Tamariz teaches magicians that it is not the hands alone that deceive, but also the feet, the body, the eyes and the voice. It is only through a full understanding of all five of these tools of nature and communication that the conjurer can spin a complete web of illusion that traps and then transports his audiences into the astonishing realm he has prepared for them.

Williamson's Wonders is the only book ever published on the magic of award-winning magician David Williamson (written by Richard Kaufman) and includes many tricks that have since been featured on national television by David Blaine. If you're looking for visual walk around street magic using cards and coins than this will prove to be a worthwhile read.

Magical Mathematics reveals the secrets of amazing, fun-to-perform card tricks--and the profound mathematical ideas behind them--that will astound even the most accomplished magician. Persi Diaconis and Ron Graham provide easy, step-by-step instructions for each trick, explaining how to set up the effect and offering tips on what to say and do while performing it. Each card trick introduces a new mathematical idea, and varying the tricks in turn takes readers to the very threshold of today's mathematical knowledge. For example, the Gilbreath Principle--a fantastic effect where the cards remain in control despite being shuffled--is found to share an intimate connection with the Mandelbrot set. Other card tricks link to the mathematical secrets of combinatorics, graph theory, number theory, topology, the Riemann hypothesis, and even Fermat's last theorem.

Perhaps the greatest contemporary book featuring the magic of one individual, Carneycopia is a true delight. John Carney's thoughts and methods are superbly detailed in this excellent book by one of magic's greatest writers, Stephen Minch.

This is an informal history of sensational, scientific, silly, satisfying and startling attractions based on seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth century broadsides from Ricky Jay's extraordinary collection.