One of the best out of print magic books you can find.
Bruce Elliott has a vast knowledge of magic, and writes with precision and clarity on twelve great magic classics, Misers Dream, Four Aces, Cups and Balls, Egg Bag, Razor Blades, Billiard Balls, Paddle Tricks and others. Filled with ideas of presentation.
From it you can build a very creditable, entertaining, and magical close-up and/or stand-up (cabaret/club, stage/platform) act. Nothing else is needed but a few props (cards, coins, etc.)!
In it is just about the only easily found and clearly written published version of Roy Benson’s “Bowl” routine (the Don Alan handling at that!).
There is also Roy Benson’s version of the “Egg Bag”.
It also has perhaps the most elegant and beautiful “Misers Dream” found anywhere. It is fairly easy and can be done surrounded. This is the brilliant Club performer Wally Dean’s version. Mr. Dean starts with the production of a wine glass full of wine and then uses the wine glass as the “bucket” to drop the magically produced coins into. This is after the wine is drunk of course (to prove it real)! Sadly Mr. Dean is pretty much unknown to most of today’s magicians.
The book also has a very capable “Billiard Ball” routine and a nice “Cups and Balls” routine (that is the traditional three cups and balls version) as well as an impromptu coffee cup cups and balls.
Plus it has the “Razor Blade”
A trick called the “Corncob Pipes”. This is a trick where you get volumes of smoke from two pipes without flame or tobacco. It is a smoke from nowhere! I used to buy the corncob pipes by the gross and go through a couple of gross a year. Maybe not as relevant today as when the book was written.
In terms of close-up you get a solidversion of the “Ambitious Card”, a couple of versions of four object assemblies including aces and coins.
It has a number of paddle trick using match sticks, table or butter knives, and a business card that magically prints itself, and includes the “Dr. Sack’s Dice Routine”.
It explains a version of the Rice Bowls and has the already mentioned wine glass production (from a hank).
The book is clearly written by Bruce Elliott and illustrated nicely by Dr. Stanley Jaks.
If the value of a magic book is measured by getting “just one useable trick” then this has been my most valuable book.
You will find plenty of relevant material to make this book a very worthwhile investment.
208 pages, Hardbound
The copies are “New Old Stock” and the dust jackets show some wear from being stored all those years.