Product Description Magic is everywhere, from the big spectacle celebrity of David Copperfield and Siegfried and Roy to the quirky Penn and Teller to the spooky David Blaine and Criss Angel to the endless material on YouTube. But until now, learning it has never been easy?that's all about to change with Magic, a book that does for close-up magic what How to Grill does for barbecue. Written by charismatic young magician Joshua Jay, Magic combines expertise, photographs, step-by-step directions showing how to perform 100 tricks, and a DVD that demonstrates 35 of them.
Joshua Jay took home the top prize at the World Magic Seminar (the Olympics of magic) when he was just 16 years old. Ten years later, he continues to perform magic, write about magic, eat, sleep, and breathe magic. Here, he brings all his passion and knowledge to teaching magic. Each trick is broken down into the Effect, the Secret, the Set-up, and, most important, the Performance, with lessons on what to say, how to direct the audience's attention, where to keep your hands, and so on. (In other words, how to be smart about the things your audience is surprisingly clueless about.)
Here are the Ten Greatest Card Tricks; tricks to dazzle a dinner date; tricks to perform for the boss (poke a hole through his shirt, then magically mend it); tricks especially for kids; and even tricks for an audience in another state?with "Australian Self-Help," you can find a participant's chosen card over the phone. It's the Aha! book for a subject whose time has come.
Outstanding Magic Book Value!!! January 9, 2009 Wonderful book at a very reasonable price, with a DVD to boot!! The chapter on the 10 best card tricks is fantastic, including Out of This World and Do As I Do, two venerable classics. There are some thoughtful and original touches and embellishments to the tricks and routines which enhance presentation. Fun to read, and beautifully illustrated with color photographs. A perfect book for the magic novice, as well as someone like myself; magic's been my hobby for about 40 years. Absolutely recommended!!
A fascinating primer January 2, 2009 Magic always holds a certain sense of fascination to the audience. If you ever wanted to perform magic for a small audience, this book is for you. The tricks are mostly card tricks and making objects disappear. There are no grand illusions such as sawing someone in half. Directions are clear and there are copious photos on how to do the trick. If that is not enough, there is also included a DVD to illustrate the more difficult illusions. MAGIC is an excellent primer and truly fun to look at. Well recommended.
New, or old, to magic, just buy it. December 26, 2008 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I can NOT say enough about how good his material is.
For the price, I'd have paid four times this amount in retrospect. I'm not new to the game either. He presents material I've done for years, and added new insights that just brought them all to a new level. As a person, he is incredible. I won't go into details on this, since I never met him personally, and that's the point really. (I don't want others to take advantage of his good will. He is a good man, and he deserves everything, and anything, that comes his way.) After reading this book of his, I went to his site, and brought a DVD of his...priceless....then another...just as great. My last purchase was everything he sells. I'm tight on money, but this I won't regret ever. I'll be using the material for years I can already tell. His material is so good, I listen to his DVD lectures almost every night, and I pick up on something new almost every time. The devil is in the detail's. He truly is not exposing magic, he is teaching.
Good luck, this is one purchase I'd be surprised to hear anyone complain about, except for the die hard "never tell" people.
Remember, we all started somewhere.
Joshua Jay's work will be studied for years to come.
I wish him all the best in his life.
Are you paying attention? ... December 23, 2008 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In reading this book, I was very quickly reminded of this very famous introduction:
"A magic trick is comprised of three parts, or acts ... The first part is called The Pledge. The Magician shows you something ordinary - a deck of cards, or a bird ... or a man.
He shows you this object and perhaps he asks you to inspect it, to see that it is indeed real, unaltered ... normal. But of course, it probably isn't.
The second act is called The Turn ... the Magician takes the ordinary something, and makes it do something extraordinary.
Now you're looking for the secret, but you won't find it. Because, of course, you're not really looking.
But you wouldn't clap yet, because making something disappear isn't enough, you have to bring it back.
That's why every magic trick has a third act. The hardest part ... the part they call ... The Prestige." - Cutter (The Prestige - 2006)
...
I was fascinated to get this book and go through some of the primary tricks and develop a working repertoire of childish illusions to fool my toddler son, but what I learned is that magic ... like everything else, is difficult and requires a lot of work.
Knowing the secret of the trick doesn't immediately give you mastery over it, nor does a few executions of it, step-by-step. You really have to dedicate yourself in order to even be good at the simplest card trick. The tricks that require prestidigitation, or object manipulation, could take years of practice to develop into a skill worthy of showing others. Strong fingers and hands are an absolute must, and not necessarily the first thing that comes to mind when you embark on your magical journey.
Joshua Jay does an admirable job in trying to offer the studious a beginner's guide with a large bevy of different illusions to work with. For anyone that has ever seen Penn & Teller live, after all the hijinx and shenanigans, they really are masters, but finding a good instruction book by them isn't an easy thing at all. They do a very good job at keeping the secret arts, secret.
I really don't know why the tricks in the book were ordered the way they were, but some of them had me scratching my head. It's not until page 178 that you come across `palming' in a chapter devoted to tricks with currency. I guess that makes sense. But I think if you structuring a course, you might want to put all the elementary stuff up front, just as a way to telegraph to the audience that you understand how hard some of this stuff is to learn. In going through the book, structured this way, a question I had for the author repeatedly was: `What was the first lesson you learned and why isn't it the first lesson you're teaching me?"
So I stuck with it and after I spent about a week practicing the infamous coin palm trick, I got `decent' at my execution. I think there's a difference in `just fooling around' and seriously trying to fool someone, I was directing myself towards the latter and was willing to put in the time.
I then graduated to the Kid Conjuring Section and producing a gumball, which took an even greater amount of focus. I'm still working on the `endless gumballs from the mouth' routine and so I reckon by summer I might have it down pat.
But don't be discouraged by my review. The tricks are very carefully laid out and the DVD instruction is a giant plus and keeps your interest high whenever it begins to wane.
This is probably the best book of basic magic to come out in a long time and will sell quite a few copies as I can very easily seeing it becoming the standard text on magic in bookstores.
... ...
Best magic value out there December 22, 2008 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have an interest in magic and have purchased several DVDs and a couple of books on the subject over the past few years. Sometimes, a DVD will be $20 or $30 to reveal just one trick. This book comes with a very good DVD and covers many tricks. I can highly recommend it for middle schoolers (my daughter and my nephew) on up to well . . . when you die.
The book is jam packed with pages of color photos guiding you step by step. The text is conversational. I saw Joshua perform recently at a book signing at the UW in Seattle and his friendly real life personality comes across clearly in his DVD and book.
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