DAVID COPPERFIELD'S HISTORY OF MAGIC

Curious about conjuring? Containing many beautiful illustrations of ornate and intricate apparatus, manipulation and sleight of hand, if you are bitten by the magic bug, this big glamorous book is one for you. With more than 100 never-before-seen photographs from artifacts from David Copperfield's exclusive Museum of Magic, here are Houdini's straitjackets, handcuffs and water torture chamber, Dante's famous sawing-in-half apparatus, Alexander's high-tech turban that allowed him to read people's minds and even some coins that may have magically passed through the hands of Abraham Lincoln. We discover Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft, Robert-Houdin's magical automata, John Nevil Maskelyne's trunk, Professor Hoffmann's notebook, Bautier de Kolta's expanding die, Adalaide Herrmann's dress in a chapter entitled The Queen of Magic, Martinka's Theatre in a chapter entitled The Palace of Magic, experts at the card table, steam engines, pumps, boilers, hydraulic and other machinery and condemned to death by the Boxers, Chung Ling Soo's gun. There is a disembodied princess, a floating ball, playing cards and monocles and tuxedoes, gowns, mortarboards, a guillotine, a vanishing birdcage and the man who fooled Houdini. Climbing on the shoulders of giants, David Copperfield takes us on a personal journey through a unique performing art, profiling some of the world's most groundbreaking magicians from a 16th-century magistrate who wrote an early book on conjuring to the woman who levitated, vanished and caught bullets in her bare hands, there are performers and outsiders who use magic to escape class, challenge convention, transform popular culture and explore the innermost workings of the human mind and inspire scientific discovery. These are their incredible stories. Over 200 colour photos in a big lavish publication of 358pp, 21 x 27.6cm. Remainder mark.
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