Presto's Blog

Can you recommend some good, general books on magic?

Presto has quite a library of magic tomes. Some of his favorites are:

1. Card Collage. A tapestry of divergent magic techniques all thrown together in an attractive way.
2. The Barbell Course in Magic. A huge, multivolume overview of the entire magic profession, bound in sheets of lead so that you can build up your arms while you build up your knowledge.
3. Ant Man’s Complete One Ant Mental and Psychic Routine. A complete routine, absolutely timeless, and as classic as the super hero who wrote it.
4. The Expert with a Card Table. A classic treatise on magic that can be done anywhere, any time, with just a deck of cards and a folding table.
5. The Royale Road to Magic: Another classic, this one named after what they call a hamburger in France.
6. A Magician Among Spirits. How you, too, can see magical things if you just drink enough.
7. Art of Astonishment. Three volumes of innovative (and, sometimes, weirdly rambling) magic by some guy named Art who seems to think that everything in his house is a magic prop.
8. 101 Tricks with a Stripper. A treatise on effects that are particularly appropriate for stag parties.
9. The Encyclopedia of Cards for Tricks. An exhaustive discussion of all aspects of each card in a deck, starting with the ace of spades and working its way through the king of diamonds in just under 700 pages.
10. 13 Steps to a Migraine. The #1 book on mentalism, with a focus on heavy, brain-numbing memorization.