Sleight Of Hand (Edwin Sachs)

Description

Let’s say you’re at a dinner party and are invited to do a trick. You have no apparatus on you, nothing prepared. In an absent manner, you place a glass of sherry to your lips, as though bracing yourself for the fray. The glass is half emptied (be careful about this) when a sudden movement is made as though you threw it up to the ceiling; but nothing is seen to ascend, though the glass, with the wine in it, has disappeared. After a short pause to allow the general astonishment to take full effect, the missing article is discovered inside the coat of your immediate neighbor, with the wine in it unspilt.

How is this startling trick performed? Find out in this legendary classic of legerdemain, Sleight of Hand, widely regarded by professional magicians as one of the finest magic books ever written. Clearly and minutely, the steps are given for hundreds of astonishing tricks: drawing-room tricks with coins, common objects, cups and balls, handkerchiefs, and so on, including many fascinating card tricks-The Congenial Aces, The Traveling Cards, The Assembly, etc.: and stage magic, encompassing the more involved tricks with coins, handkerchiefs and cards, and tricks with watches and livestock, sham mesmerism and clairvoyance, the famous Cornucopian Hat, and an impressive array of miscellaneous tricks-Houdini’s Die Trick, The Ubiquitous Glass of Water, The Shower of Gold, The Chinese Rings, The Magic Omelette, The Great Dictionary Trick, and more.

Beyond supplying you with tricks, the book is teaching you the techniques of pure manual dexterity known collectively as sleight of hand. It also specifically explains many basic techniques: the palm, pass, false shuffle, change, slide, force; vanishing and producing an object, exchanging articles; and using such essential apparatus as the specially prepared table and dress coat, The Devil’s Handkerchief, The Coin Handkerchief, Magician’s Eggs, and The Coin-Vanishing Tumbler. Any apparatus required is inexpensive or easy to make.

Be assured that sleight of hand relies primarily on dexterity, not apparatus. And if you are truly interested in magic, you must eventually master sleight-of-hand techniques or give up the idea of being anything more than a beginning magician. These techniques, both basic and more advanced, are all here-in the best book on the subject that you could possibly own.

Unabridged (1980) republication of the second enlarged (1885) edition.

Dover edition; soft covers; 408 pages.