(Part 2) Best magic & illusion books according to redditors
We found 218 Reddit comments discussing the best magic & illusion books. We ranked the 78 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
27. Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals about Our Everyday Deceptions
2 mentions
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I remember reading The man who counted about a million years ago in high school. I think it was pretty good (there's a particular "inheritance division" story which is pretty nice and I still remember a bit).
In college I picked up Conway and Guy's Book of numbers and I still think it's one of the best math books ever.
Then you have the obvious Anything Martin Gardner wrote suggestion which cant be bad. If you want to learn "serious math" he has an annotated version of an old book on calculus based on infinitesimals which some people are really into.
A bit meta but I for one enjoyed Polya's books on Mathematics and plausible reasoning (and also the very short but nice "How to solve it").
Also there's the very nice collection of particularly elegant reasoning Proofs from the book but the math is pretty advanced I guess.
A good way to learn math while having fun is to look at problem collections. I remember Halmos' Problems for mathmaticians young and old giving me many nice challenges to think of on the bus.
Those are all pretty old books. A bit newer is a book I haven't read it but I've heard really nice things about: Persi Diaconis and Ron Graham's book Magical mathematics which I think explains the math behind different types of magic tricks.
Hope this helps! Have a good time!
I cheated and picked three...I couldn't stop I'm sorry, please forgive me.
Have fun on your trip! Hope you find a fantastic book to get you through the flight!
You'll find that and more in Abbott's Encyclopedia of Rope Tricks for Magicians. It's the Royal Road / Bobo of rope magic. 'The Master Cut and Restored String' in chapter 4 would give that kind of effect. It's normally one of the first rope tricks people learn (or was when I was a kid).
Keep in mind that many experts believe that Erdnase either made up fake alternates of some of the methods or inadvertently screwed them up when recording them in about six places as they don't really work.
Most of them do, and youtube--I'm sure--has alternate methods for the other six.
REF: http://forums.ellusionist.com/showthread.php?48740-The-Expert-at-the-Card-Table
This version has an errata section explaining the errors in descriptions:
https://www.amazon.com/Expert-Card-Table-ebook/dp/B005JDRYTS
You might also want to check out the Illustrated History of Magic (Amazon) which is a pretty expansive historical review of the entire art of magic.
This is a great question for here.
Is your boyfriend into history at all? The Illustrated History of Magic is a beautiful book and full of fascinating facts about magicians from the past. It's not really just tricks so it's something you could enjoy with him.
For actual trick books, The Books of Wonder are probably the most important books for magic in the last 20 years. ^[Citation ^needed]
If your boyfriend is into more theoretical views of magic (not a whole lot of people are though) the Fitzkee trilogy are what Tommy Wonder (the author of the previous book) cited as the most important books for him. They don't really focus on cards, but are more a theoretical take on all of magic.
I'm not really all that much of a card magician. I would assume he has the important card books already. (Expert at the Card Table, Expert Card Technique, Royal Road, etc) Maybe Revolutionary Card Technique.
Hope this helps!
https://www.amazon.es/Aprenda-Ud-Magia-Juan-Tamariz/dp/8485060245/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473713650&sr=8-1&keywords=juan+tamariz
I looked up Juan Tamariz on the Spanish amazon.
For more reading on the origin of the effect, give Hiding the Elephant a read!
For those interested, Persi Diaconis and Ron Graham have a very interesting book titled "Magical Mathematics: The Mathematical Ideas that Animate Great Magic Tricks" (Amazon link). It mostly focuses on magic, and card magic at that, but there is an interesting chapter on juggling.
I loved Hiding the Elephant by Jim Steinmeyer. You'll likely get many recommendations for it here.
I also liked Fooling Houdini by Alex Stone.
http://www.amazon.com/Zvi-Mowshowitzs-My-Files-ebook/dp/B003ZYFCBA
Here's a fact about Harry Houdini you didn't know. Houdini was a great escape artist, but he longed to be what he wasn't: a world-class magician. The magic portions of his act lacked the finesse and stage talent of a real magician. At one point, he managed to construct the largest, most astonishing stage magic creation so far ever done: causing an elephant to disappear at the New York Hippodrome. But his stage presence was so poor that almost no one in the audience realized the magnitude of the feat: he just got a bit of smattering applause.
The Royal Road to Card Magic. It's... magic.
https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Math-Solving-Figuring-Out/dp/0465096212/ref=nodl_
I watched it again and it's just too much for 27 minutes. The brain as a computer running an image processing program with error prediction / error correction codes is a model. One of the premises of that model is that all of our experience is confined to the physical brain cells inside our skull. This is a model which is great for inspiring a bunch of laboratory neurologists' experiments and writeups.
Ramsey could have made the same presentation using either the Darren Brown magic act or the football game broadcast signal transmission as his example and it might have been a much tidier presentation. Either example is sufficient to illustrate the point and using both is wasteful.
In Sleights of Mind Macknik and Martinez-Conde say in the first chapter on page 9:
> The reason you can do these things is that, essentially, you are a prediction machine, and you effortlessly and correctly predict almost every event that is about to occur in your life.
By the way Macknik and Martinez-Conde repeat the Gardner canard that all stage magicians view occultists as criminals out to cheat your grandma out of her grocery money. Stated as an axiom, without evidence, like it's something everybody knows.
I'm a philosophically naturalist Buddhist. (I don't believe that anything supernatural exists.)
Therefore, logically enough, I don't believe that anyone ever has supernatural powers, whatever said person's religious persuasion or training.
(By "supernatural" we'll include all synonyms here: "magical powers", "psychic powers", "divine powers", whatever.)
On the other hand, people can develop unusual natural abilities through training - if I saw any performance of Cirque du Soleil and wasn't a hard-core naturalist, I'd be willing to believe that I was seeing a display of supernatural powers!
It seems reasonable to assume that said yogis and similar people do sometimes train and develop such natural but unusual and impressive abilities.
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A very interesting book on Asian magic in myth, psychology, and actual performance -
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Net-Magic-Wonders-Deceptions-India/dp/0226756874
Highly recommended.
In which Randi exposes charlatans who deceive the public.
I'm not familiar with that edition.
Try this one - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Royal-Road-Card-Magic/dp/0572029187/
Amazon offers a kindle version: The Magician and the Cardsharp: The Search for America's Greatest Sleight-of-Hand Artist https://www.amazon.com/dp/0805080597/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awd_EfBywb585T66V
Can you give me the name of your local library? I'm a librarian and can try to help you find an electronic version of this book. I need some geographic data though.
Once, when a fellow magician innocently suggested Dai Vernon give Houdini some pointers on a particular sleight, Houdini exploded in anger. I don't have the exact source handy at the moment, but I know it's detailed in this book.
It's amazing how much of the plot of The Prestige is lifted from actual history. See "The Glorious Deception - The Double Life of William Robinson, aka Chung Ling Soo, the 'Marvelous Chinese Conjurer'" by Jim Steinmeyer for a true story of warring magicians, fatal magic, and keeping up deception even off stage.
May i suggest a very classy school that does this already: scam school. it's where i got my interest back with episode one. If you're into card stuff, the book everyone suggest to look into is The Royal Road to Card Magic.
Discrete mathematics with ducks!
Contemporary Abstract Algebra
An Illustrated Theory of Numbers
Visual Complex Analysis
Number-Crunching
The Magic of Math: Solving for x and Figuring Out Why
The Princeton Companion to Mathematics
The Number Devil: A Mathematical Adventure
Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
One Two Three . . . Infinity: Facts and Speculations of Science
Recently made a move and these are a few books on my shelf that stand out more.
There are so many beautiful mathematical images that could be chosen though and I do wish more publishers would have more creative book covers also.
I really enjoyed Slights of Mind. It's not about defects though- it's more about how people use the normal operation of the brain to decieve.
>able to pierce themselves with large swords / skewers, after their rituals.
Fuck that. I can do that. You can do that.
If they can do that, then anybody can do that.
If you can't do that either, then they can't do it. It's what magicians call a "trick".
>They wouldn't be able to do so before the rituals.
Bullshit.
If they can do it after the ritual, then they can do it before the ritual.
>I have seen it
I believe that.
But what you saw wasn't supernatural or paranormal.
It was just people sticking pointy objects into themselves (or pretending to.)
I've seen someone doing that too. The guy doing it specifically said that it was just a trick. I have no idea how he did it.
The most likely explanation based on what I saw is that he just stuck a pointy object into his body. I could be wrong about that.
>you are dismissing that they are illusionist who have nothing better to do but perform in temples or along the street??.
Please, please, please -
read this
Net of Magic: Wonders and Deceptions in India, by Lee Siegel
- http://www.amazon.com/Net-Magic-Wonders-Deceptions-India/dp/0226756874 -
It's a very good book about the thousands of illusionists in India who have nothing better to do but perform in temples or along the street. The author is an anthropologist and a member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians, and a good friend of a lot of these street illusionists.
and read this
Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions, by James Randi
- http://www.amazon.com/Flim-Flam-Psychics-Unicorns-Other-Delusions/dp/0879751983/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312470111&sr=1-1 -
Yes, you know what you saw. But you don't know anything else.
The people that you saw were doing magic tricks. People have been doing these tricks for thousands of years. They know how to fool people.
They fooled you.
Not in any particular order, but any of these would be perfect for your young 10 year old aspiring student of magic! None of these will break your bank! :
The Magic Digest by George B. Anderson I picked up a used copy of this book 5 years ago for around 2 dollars. In my opinion, you should acquire a copy for your son for cheap before the prices go up! Don't worry about getting a pristine/good copy, my copy is in "acceptable" condition, but that doesn't take away from the secrets and advice it holds. It's an old book, but it's excellent! It is filled with solid advice for magicians of any age and very solid magic all throughout. It still falls into the realm of a "beginners" book, but I'm definitely not a beginner in magic but was still blown away by its content! Most of the tricks are self working, some use very basic sleight of hand that is also expertly taught in this work. This is truly a book I wish I could have had earlier on in my study! I simply can't recommend this enough!
Big Magic for Little Hands: 25 Outstanding Illusions for Young Magicians by Joshua Jay Despite his young age, the author Joshua Jay is without a doubt one of the most knowledgeable and thoughtful students of magic that I've encountered over the years. This book is a fantastic example of why I have this opinion about him! I picked this up a year ago for one of my co-workers kids that loved watching some of the magic I do. I was humbled to have my co-worker tell me that because of me and some of the tricks I taught his father, that she too wanted to learn magic. I was so humbled that I wanted to do her father and her a solid and get them both a quality magic book that was suitable for a 7 year old. I got wind of this and ordered it. After reading half the book over the weekend before handing it to her father the following Monday, I was so inspired and blown away by the content in here that I ordered a copy for myself to study also. The magic and advice in here is that solid and it I don't care if it's targeted at young magicians! I still learned from it! Fantastic!
Magic: The Complete Course by Joshua Jay There is a nice mix of basic sleight of hand and self working tricks in this big book for an outstanding price! The magic taught in here is top notch and this book encompasses many, many areas of magic! Heck, they even tip a way for an aspiring magician to make something like an Invisible Deck, which is considered by many top professionals to be one of the best "special decks", with a common household item. I've tried it myself and it works beautifully in a pinch! This book even comes with a DVD to accompany some of the amazing content in this work!
The Magic Handbook by Peter Eldin This holds a special place in my heart! I believe it was 1988 when my grandmother gifted me this very book when she thought I was "outgrowing" my Fischer Price magic set. This book is outstanding and it's easy to tell that Peter Eldin has a deep love and respect for magic as an artform. There is only a few basic sleights in here, but don't let that scare you or your son. I was 5 when I started learning a lot of this stuff and thanks to the clear illustrations and text, I had very little trouble learning basic card handling from this as well as ways to conceal a coin. One of the highlights for me in this was a very unique handling of a classic coin trick known as "The Miser's Dream". Your son will have the ability to seemingly and continuously produce coins out of thin air and get this...without sleight of hand technique....This version is still a "go to" for me...Need I say more? :D
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Mark Wilson's Complete Course in Magic This book truly lives up to what the title promises. I would be hard pressed to find a more comprehensive course in magic for 15 bucks! Sponge Balls, Cards, Coins, Mental Magic, Stage Illusions that can be made at home, solid advice from a legend, information that I haven't found elsewhere, among other things! This book will keep both and your son busy for a long, long time! Self Working tricks, basic sleights and tricks to accompany them, great methods, inspirational food thought. I simply wouldn't feel right not recommend this to anyone who loves magic!
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Karl Fulves "Self Working" Series: All of these are dirt cheap and worth any students time and study regardless of age or experience! Collect them all or simply pick a subject that your son favors! This series encompasses mental magic as well as magic with cards, coins, numbers, paper, rope, handkerchiefs, and household objects! Any one of these will serve your son well.
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Scarne on Card Tricks and Scarne's Magic Tricks I would recommend getting both of these together. There are hundreds upon hundreds of quality tricks from some of magic's legends including: Paul Rossini, Dai Vernon and Harry Blackstone to name a few! All these tricks were re-worked by those magicians with the help of John Scarne to eliminate most or all sleight of hand while not sacrificing the clarity of effect! These two books are classics for a reason! Highly recommended!
Lots of recommendations here for sure and yes these are all books, but I'll even recommend a fantastic and entertaining DVD for you and your son!
Amazing Magic and Mentalism Anyone Can Do by Jay Sankey 39 stellar tricks that are as fun to learn as they are to perform. Very basic sleight of hand tricks and even some self working ones taught by one of my favorite teachers, Jay Sankey!
TL;DR: Just click on the links provided. Hope you like what you see! :)
It's not impossible. Street hustler John Bell said he made money through bar bets he was sure to win (http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Scams-Hustles-Hustlers-Bible-ebook/dp/B00EH4BDMO).
I hope his story in the intro was true.
Could this be one you're looking for? Spotted on Amazon...
http://www.amazon.com/Quest-Pro-Tour-ebook/dp/B002B3XZ2O/ref=pd_sim_kinc_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2