Incredible escapes, fantastic sleight-of-hand-Houdini's most challenging
performances are dramatically portrayed in Houdini's Fabulous Magic.
Walter Gibson, co-author, was in close touch with Harry Houdini for a
number of years before his death and worked with the master magician in
preparing material for the book. It is with the aid of Houdini's own
scrapbooks and notes that this book was written.
The spectacular highlights of Houdini's career are described-and
explained-here. Included are the famous escapes: escapes from a
padlocked milk can filled with water; from locked jail cells; from a
water-filled Chinese torture cell while suspended upside down; from
packing cases weighted under water. Again, in this book, Houdini walks
through a brick wall, vanishes a 10,000-pound elephant and is buried
alive. Once more, Houdini and his wife Bessie mysteriously exchange
places in a locked trunk-in three seconds!
And Houdini the man is not ignored. His impact on the world in the early
years of the twentieth century was enormous. He was a public hero who,
in his own way, helped sweep out the cobwebs of nineteenth-century
thinking. While doing so, he distinguished himself as a patriot, writer,
collector of magic, aviator, movie idol, philanthropist, and crusader
against fraudulent spiritualistic practices.
This is a technical manual for magicians, complete with illustrations
and diagrams, but it is also an astute analysis of the best of Houdini's
magic and a readable biography of a man who turned himself into a
legend. It is a book for would-be conjurers, for professional
necromancers, for those curious about the methods and means of one of
the most enchanting men of our century.
