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.
Зміст
Foreword 7
The Substitution Trunk 13
Houdini’s Handcuff Act 21
Houdini’s Jail Escapes 37
Houdini’s Card Scaling 49
The Straitjacket Escape 54
The Needle Trick 69
Houdini’s Box Escapes 84
The Milk Can Escape 102
Other Milk Can Escapes 119
The Mailbag Escape 131
Walking Through A Brick Wall 136
The Vanishing Elephant 159
The Orange Tree 179
Houdini’s Radio Illusion 183
The Giant Card Star 185
The Buried Box Escape 190
Pillory Escapes 194
Underwater Escapes 197
The Water Torture Cell 210
About Houdini 233
Acknowledgements 252
Bibliography 254
About the Authors 258
Про автора
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.Більше електронних книг того самого автора / Редактор
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