Magic For Dummies

by David Pogue

You don’t need a white tiger, expensive props, or hours of preparation to do magic. With a little practice, some clever misdirection (which lays at the heart of all magic tricks), and showmanship, you can surprise family, friends, and coworkers using a few everyday items! If you’re looking to saw a beautiful women in half or make buildings disappear, we’re sorry, but this book isn’t you. But if you want to act out little miracles that you can perform on the spur of the moment with items that are usually within reach, then Magic For Dummies can show you how. Magic For Dummies features more than 90 easy-to-perform deceptions, illusions, and sleights of hand for any event or occasion. You’ll discover how to perform entertaining card tricks, coin tricks, disappearing acts, as well as the always-popular mind reading trick. You’ll even see how easy it is to make money disappear as well as melt a saltshaker! Chock-full of show-stopping tricks, Magic For Dummies Filled with photos, patter, and presentation tips for every trick in the book, Magic For Dummies offers a great opportunity to become familiar with some of the coolest magic tricks ever performed. With the help of author David Pogue and the stunning tricks contributed by thirty-five of America’s top professional magicians, you’ll be leaving your friends, family, and coworkers spellbound at your mastery of the mystical arts.

Genres: Magic, Nonfiction

416 pages, Paperback

Published August 14, 1998

About the author

David Pogue, Yale '85, is the weekly personal-technology columnist for the New York Times and an Emmy award-winning tech correspondent for CBS News. His funny tech videos appear weekly on CNBC. And with 3 million books in print, he is also one of the world's bestselling how- to authors. He wrote or co-wrote seven books in the "For Dummies" series (including Macs, Magic, Opera, and Classical Music). In 1999, he launched his own series of amusing, practical, and user-friendly computer books called Missing Manuals, which now includes 100 titles.

David and his wife, Jennifer Pogue, MD, live in Connecticut with their three young children.

Reviews

[Vincenzo Ravina · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are many good tricks in this book, though a lot of the advice is horrible. It implies an us vs. them, where you make yourself superior by fooling someone. It’s the wrong way to perform magic and the wrong way to think about magic.

The suggested patter for most of the tricks is also horrible.

But it’s a fun book and it’s always good to re-examine the basics. I wouldn’t suggest it for a true beginner on account of how damaging the general advice and patter is, but it’s fun for someone who already knows a fair bit about magic and has a good grasp on what makes for good magic already. There are several things in the book I want to try.

For a true beginner, I’d recommend Joshua Jay’s Complete Course in Magic. A much better first step.

This book, being from the 90s, also made me nostalgic for a smaller world. The magic advisors for the book all have little bios where some of them have included their personal email addresses or phone numbers. There are all these URLs at the back of the book that remind me of how the Internet was in the early days before social media. People has personal websites. You might visit fifty or a hundred sites in a day instead of getting all your information from one feed. The internet was like a treasure hunt. You had to stumble upon the good stuff. I’m glad I got to experience that version of the internet.

[Joey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is one of the greatest teachers I have ever had. Sure, most of these tricks only work on the young, but the knowledge of them is priceless. I cannot wait to try them on my little cousins!

[William-Henri Turgeon-Dupuis · Rating 4 out of 5]

très bon tour

[Jose Jimenez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Buen material para el ilusionista principiante o un regalo para niños curiosos.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Se me había olvidado que compré este libro para adentrarme al mundo de la magia, solo aprendí dos trucos facilitos, y me retiré de dicho oficio u_u.