Books in the Dover Magic Books series

Clear diagrams and step-by-step instructions for performing 18 simple feats of prestidigitation: Strength Test, Untangled, Elastic Lock, Mystic Spinner, Rollaway, Heavyset, The Great Escape and many more, using such ordinary objects as coins, rubber bands and string.

Outstanding collection of nearly 200 crowd-pleasing mental magic feats requiring no special equipment. Author offers insider's tips and expert advice on techniques, presentation, diversions, patter, staging, more.

With this book by an expert in magic and card conjuring, youngsters can master a host of tricks especially designed for them. Card-trick newcomers need no special skills--just a willingness to practice--to accomplish such astonishing stunts as finding a card under seemingly impossible conditions. Illustrations.

In the first decades of the twentieth century magicians filled the magic journals with articles on card tricks, giving improvements on classic tricks and inventing new ones. If you could put together a collection of these magazines you would have almost a complete course on card tricks, by some of the world's greatest magicians. But where could you find these journals now that they are probably collector's items? And even if you could find them, how much would such a collection cost? Not very much. Because all the best of these tricks are available in this one monumental book, containing nearly every practical card trick produced, invented, and improved by magicians over a span of forty years and more. A truly staggering collection, this book explains how to perform over 600 professional card tricks: impromptu card tricks, spelling tricks, "you do as I do" tricks, diachylon (a paste for gluing cards together) tricks, calculation tricks; tricks using key cards, slick cards, double-backed cards, reversed cards, short cards; tricks based on a one-way pack, prearranged pack, Svengali pack, Mene-Tekel pack, stripper pack; special packs; miscellaneous tricks including Everywhere and Nowhere, The Case of the Four Kings, Card in the Orange, The Buddha Whispers, and Inseparable Aces; and a final chapter on tricks using the famous Nikola Card System. In addition, a chapter on technique explains the most important sleights―the overhand shuffle, riffle shuffle, false cut, palm, simple pass, double lift, glide, and force. Based on a volume compiled by Dr. Wilhelm Von Deusen and Glenn G. Gravatt, this collection was thoroughly revised by Jean Hugard and completely rewritten. It is easily the finest single compendium of classic card tricks, and the clear style makes the instructions easy to follow. An indispensable book for the professional or amateur magician, it is a magnificent source for anyone who wants just the right tricks to mystify his friends or delight his children. Unabridged, corrected republication of the 1937 edition.

Excellent guidebook, with illustrations and easy-to-follow directions, provides the novice with fundamentals for successfully mastering The False Shuffle, The Corner Crimp, Sensitive Finger Tips, Palming, The Glide, The Slip Force, Reading the Pack, and 43 other impressive techniques. No special dexterity required. 13 diagrams.

When party guests request a few tricks, be prepared. Ask for a coin, and perform some of the tricks in this book. Because you will not have been aided by special stage apparatus, the results will be all the more astonishing. As tricks with coins are so readily improvised, they are among the most impressive forms of legerdemain.This book is the most complete treatise ever written on sleight-of-hand coin conjuring. Celebrated magician J. B. Bobo has gathered here the best and most useful of all coin tricks--not only his own, but those of some four dozen notable prestidigitators, including such greats as Robert-Houdin, Professer Hoffman, and--the greatest of all coin conjurers--T. Nelson Downs.All the tested, traditional methods of coin magic are here. Bobo has added to these the best of the modern innovations, while eliminating all of the out-of-date and impractical sleights of his sources. You will learn all about palms, holds, flips, switches, change-over, steals, cuffing, sleeving, and other sleight-of-hand techniques; coin tricks requiring special devices are also included. The author guides how systematically from basic techniques, concealments, and vanishes, through integrated tricks, to complete routine acts (18 in all). His clear explanations are splendidly complemented by 510 of Nelson C. Hahne's crisp illustrations.Sleight-of-hand magic has consistently earned the respect of professional magicians. If you are yet an amateur, this easy-to-follow manual--together with regular practice--is the surest route to professional-level competence. For professionals, this volume is a convenient encyclopedic reference that gathers in one place all the best coin magic from antiquity to modern times.