Magic For Dummies (For Dummies

by David Pogue

Move over, David Copperfield. The coolest magic tricks have been gathered together in one book, best-selling author David Pogue's Magic For Dummies , which is guaranteed to leave your friends, family and coworkers spellbound at your mastery of the mystical arts. Perform great magic at the drop of a hat with these tips and tricks -- literally -- from Pogue and 35 of America's top professional magicians. With a little practice (and some clever misdirection, which lays at the heart of all magic tricks), you'll bewitch everyone around you with card tricks, coin tricks, disappearing acts, and even mind-reading! Magic For Dummies features more than 90 deceptions, illusions, and sleights of hand for all occasions, along with photos, patter, and presentation tips for every trick in the book. You'll be pulling rabbits out of your hat for years to come with these great magic tricks...easy enough to learn, and enchanting enough to keep folks baffled and bewildered.

Genres: Magic, Nonfiction

408 pages, Paperback

Published July 23, 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.