History of magic

Not precisely a history of magic, this beautifully illustrated book is actually an armchair tour through Copperfield's vast International Museum and Library of the Conjuring Arts, which the famed stage magician assembled piece by piece, almost entirely in secret, over a period of more than 30 years. In taking us through his collection, Copperfield introduces some of the key people in the history of magic. Here, for example, is Reginald Scot, whose sixteenth-century book The Discoverie of Witchcraft (in which Scot revealed the secrets of some popular illusions) may have played a key role in the shift away from a belief in witchcraft and the eventual end to witch hunts, though not until after the Salem witchcraft trials in the late-seventeenth century. Here's John Nevil Maskelyne, whose technique of presenting stage illusions within a narrative framework inspired the early filmmaker Georges Méliès to incorporate special effects into his movies. Here's Adelaide Herrmann, "magic's first female headliner," who conquered vaudeville and inspired countless young women. The names in this book--Houdini, Henning, Blackstone, Thurston, Kellar--constitute a veritable Who's Who of magic, and there is no one more qualified to talk about them, and the wonderful illusions they crafted, than Copperfield. For fans of magic, either its history or its present, the book is absolutely compelling, an unputdownable must-read.

One of the greatest illusionists of all time, with 21 Emmy Awards he'll never let vanish, Copperfield here chronicles 28 magicians who greatly influenced the art. He starts with a 16th-century magistrate who wrote the first book on the subject, moves up to a trickster to tricked Houdini, and ends with a woman who caught bullets in her teeth. With a 150,000-copy first printing and more than 100 never-before-seen photographs.