Full name: Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear

Author: Jim Steinmeyer Year: 2003 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Non Fiction, History, Science Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Goodreads Amazon ISBNs: 9780786714018 0786714018

Now in paperback comes Jim Steinmeyer's astonishing chronicle of half a century of illusionary innovation, backstage chicanery, and keen competition within the world of magicians. Lauded by today's finest magicians and critics, Hiding the Elephant is a cultural history of the efforts among legendary conjurers to make things materialize, levitate, and disappear. Steinmeyer unveils the secrets and life stories of the fascinating personalities behind optical marvels such as floating ghosts interacting with live actors, disembodied heads, and vanishing ladies. He demystifies Pepper's Ghost, Harry Kellar's Levitation of Princess Karnak, Charles Morritt's Disappearing Donkey, and Houdini's landmark vanishing of Jennie the elephant in 1918. The dramatic mix of science and history, with revealing diagrams, photographs and magicians' portraits by William Stout, provides a glimpse behind the curtain at the backstage story of magic. Similar books: The Glorious Deception by Jim Steinmeyer Jay's Journal of Anomalies by Ricky Jay Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women by Ricky Jay The Mirror of magic by Kurt Seligmann The Greatest Stories Never Told by Rick Beyer The Code Book by Simon Singh The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee A Man on the Moon by Andrew Chaikin The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert Cod by Mark Kurlansky Salt by Mark Kurlansky The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough Hackers by Steven Levy The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan The Cracking Code Book by Simon Singh How Apollo Flew to the Moon by W. David Woods The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston The Information by James Gleick