Jim Steinmeyer

Investigates the sources that inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula, drawing from archives, letters, and literary and theatrical history to reveal who and what inspired the creation of the legendary monster.

Bram Stoker's Trail of Blood

Who was Dracula?

The author delves deeply into Harry Houdini's greatest illusion, tracing every aspect of this fascinating story, including the magicians who were his mentors, to uncover the secret of how he made an elephant disappear before a stunned audience. Reprint.

How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear

Hiding the Elephant

the man who invented the supernatural

Charles Fort

Noel Daniel

Mike Caveney

Celebrating 500 years of the culture of the world's greatest magicians, "Magic Book" features more than 1,000 posters, photographs, handbills, and engravings, and traces the history of magic as a performing art from the 1470s through the post-World War II years.

Magic, 1400s-1950s

From the author of Hiding the Elephant and The Glorious Deception comes a collection of five essays that shows how the great stage illusions were integrally products of their time, based on the traditions and fashions of the people, and the offspring of the incredible, inventive personalities who brought them to the stage. Like no other author, Jim Steinmeyer gives us insight into the timeless appeal of magic. His human subjects include such characters as Steele MacKaye, Maskelyne, David Devant, P.T. Selbit, Horace Goldin, and Charles Morritt. Illusions he discusses include: The Mascot Moth, Sawing a Lady in Halves, and Morritt's Disappearing Donkey.

And Other Essays of Illusion

Art and Artifice

A seminal portrait of an influential early twentieth-century chronicler of the paranormal evaluates his role in challenging period orthodoxies associated with various supernatural phenomena, in an account that evaluates his investigations into both scientific and otherworldly theories. 15,000 first printing.

The Man who Invented the Supernatural

Peter Lamont

Pull back the curtain on the real history of magic – and discover why magic really matters If you read a standard history of magic, you learn that it begins in ancient Egypt, with the resurrection of a goose in front of the Pharaoh. You discover how magicians were tortured and killed during the age of witchcraft. You are told how conjuring tricks were used to quell rebellious colonial natives. The history of magic is full of such stories, which turn out not to be true. Behind the smoke and mirrors, however, lies the real story of magic. It is a history of people from humble roots, who made and lost fortunes, and who deceived kings and queens. In order to survive, they concealed many secrets, yet they revealed some and they stole others. They engaged in deception, exposure, and betrayal, in a quest to make the impossible happen. They managed to survive in a world in which a series of technological wonders appeared, which previous generations would have considered magical. Even today, when we now take the most sophisticated technology for granted, we can still be astonished by tricks that were performed hundreds of years ago. The Secret History of Magic reveals how this was done. It is about why magic matters in a world that no longer seems to have a place for it, but which desperately needs a sense of wonder.

The True Story of the Deceptive Art

The Secret History of Magic

Ricky Jay

Take a truly magical mystery tour with this sparkling compendium of magic and trickery from medieval thaumaturgies to 20th-century showmen. Featuring hundreds of rarely seen vintage posters, photographs, handbills, and engravings, Magic follows this special performing art from the 1400s to the 1950s.

The Magic Book

"Jim Steinmeyer highlights some of the groundbreaking professional material developed by Alan Wakeling, including mind-reading, billiard ball tricks, and many large-scale illusions that the magicians, designers, and producers of today continue to integrate into their acts"-- Back cover.

The Works of a Master Magician

The Magic of Alan Wakeling

In a biography woven from equal parts enchantment and mystery, master illusion designer and today's foremost magic historian, Jim Steinmeyer, unveils the astonishing secrets behind the enigmatic performer Chung Ling Soo, the "Marvelous Chinese Conjurer" — a magician whose life of intrigue and daring remains unparalleled to this day. He learned his art during a revolutionary era in show business, just as minstrel, circus, and variety saloons were being stirred together and distilled into a heady new concoction: vaudeville. Soo's infamous death in 1918 astonished the world: he was killed during a performance of "Defying the Bullets," his popular act in which he caught marked bullets on a porcelain plate. After his death, the deceptions began to unravel. It was discovered that he was not Chinese, but rather a fifty-six-year-old American named William Ellsworth Robinson, a former magicians' assistant, and the husband of Olive Robinson. But even William Robinson was not who he appeared to be, and for the first time, Jim Steinmeyer has uncovered the truth behind Robinson and the magic world's most glorious deception.

The Double Life of William Robinson, aka Chung Ling Soo, the Marvelous Chinese Conjurer

The Glorious Deception

Take a truly magical mystery tour with this sparkling compendium of magic and trickery from medieval thaumaturgies to 20th-century showmen. Featuring hundreds of rarely seen vintage posters, photographs, handbills, and engravings, The Magic Book follows this special performing art from the 1400s to the 1950s.

Here is the seminal biography of the magician's magician, Howard Thurston, a man who surpassed Houdini in the eyes of showmen and fans and set the standard fro how stage magic is performed today. Everyone knows Houdini-but who was Thurston? In this rich, vivid biography of the "greatest magician in the world," celebrated historian of stage magic Jim Steinmeyer captures the career and controversies of the wonder-worker extraordinaire, Howard Thurston. The public's fickleness over magicians has left Thurston all but forgotten today. Yet Steinmeyer shows how his story is one of the most remarkable in show business. During his life, from 1869 to 1936, Thurston successfully navigated the most dramatic changes in entertainment-from street performances to sideshows to wagon tours through America's still-wild West to stage magic amid the glitter of grand theaters. Thurston became one of America's most renowned vaudeville stars, boldly performing an act with just a handful of playing cards, and then had the foresight to leave vaudeville, expanding his show into an extravaganza with more than forty tons of apparatusand costumes. His touring production was an American institution for nearly thirty years, and Thurston earned a brand name equal to Ziegfeld or Ringling Brothers. Steinmeyer explores the stage and psychological rivalry between Thurston and Houdini during the first decades of the twentieth century- a contest that Thurston won. He won with a bigger show, a more successful reputation, and the title of America's greatest magician. In The Last Greatest Magician in the World, Thurston's magic show is revealed as the one that animates our collective memories.

Howard Thurston Versus Houdini & the Battles of the American Wizards

The Last Greatest Magician in the World

Traces the life and legacy of the turn-of-the-twentieth-century magician, covering his vaudeville successes, rivalry with Houdini, and role in setting the standard for magical performances today.

Jim Steinmeyer

Books

Your next favorite book is out there