David P. Abbott (1863–1934)

Any presentation of the marvelous whether by nature or artist has a mundane mechanics behind it. A rainbow is reflection, refraction and dispersal of light. A painting is color mixtures and brush strokes and technique. While all art seeks to disguise it’s source, magic has a unique relationship to it’s mechanics. Magicians or charlatans, depending upon their context, work to misdirect your attention from one cause to another. David K. Abbot, contemporary and friend of Harry Houdini, was a premier magician of his time. And like Houdini, Abbott made it a calling to unveil charlatans who used the tricks of his trade for unscrupulous purposes—largely those who claimed to communicate with the dead at the expense of their living counterparts. This book represents Abbott’s take on a few of the acts he considered disreputable—and by unveiling these “impossible” feats he reveals how we all might be manipulated. A quick little book that almost reads like a technical manual, it is fun to be shown the mechanics of the magic and how Abbot’s mind works when he is not sure how the subject performs a trick but still manages to pull off the same trick using a method of his own devising. Recommended for anyone even remotely interested in magic and even for those interested in history. Among his fans are Penn & Teller who have written two books about him.… (plus d'informations)