Customer Reviews

Fooling Houdini: Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks, and the Hidden Powers of the Mind

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This book is not a guide to magic tricks. You won't be doing one-handed faro shuffles or making trains disappear after reading it. That being said, the author tells a compelling story about where magic came from, how it evolved, and its oft-forgotten sides.

He delves into the ethics, physics, and psychology of a discipline that appears a lot more shallow on the surface, but the reader is made familiar with the other facets very quickly.

It is not a tale of success, but of the pursuit of deeper understanding, and through that pursuit, the reader meets not only the victories but also the challenges.

Magicians taking up entrenchments about whether the author is a hack seem to ignore that he makes no grandiose claims of being a virtuoso, but seems to detail his failures, insecurities, and anxieties throughout. If anything, the book is a disclaimer about going into magic with lack of focus or dedication.

Great read for a layperson curious about magic but not necessarily interested in abandoning their life for it.

This book is stunning. As a fellow magician this book is an amazing read that keeps you glued to this book. When I first heard about it I was on the fence to get it or not, I must say if you are in that mind set buy it! It is easily my number one favorite book! Great book Mr Stone hope to see more from you soon!

The best magic trick of Alex Stone's career will be getting this book published. It's an investigation by a confessed hack, non-expert dilettante who thinks he's gained access to magic's inner circles but never really leaves the sandbox.

The book is full of factual errors and misleading claims. Most of the people claims as experts aren't. The author is on a mission to convince himself (and unfortunately the reader) that magic is easy and anyone can become an expert once you learn a few secrets.

While some might argue that it's nice to read about the trials and tribulations of a mediocre practitioner who doesn't manage to achieve his goals, most of us have better uses for our time.