Dunninger's Complete Encyclopedia Of Magic

by Joseph Dunninger

Famous tricks and mysterious feats of magic are explained by a master magician.

Genres: Magic, Nonfiction, Reference

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1967

Reviews

[Stewart Tame · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is another book that's been a semi-constant companion since childhood. As such, it's impossible for me to review objectively.

In a few reviews, I’ve mentioned my lifelong fascination with magic. It's strictly a hobby. Over the years, I’ve discovered that, while I enjoy doing occasional tricks for friends and family, it's not something I want to do as a career. I like knowing about it, and I enjoy seeing others perform, but that's largely it. I’ve certainly read a LOT of magic books over the years, and this one was one of the first.

I think, as a child, I was at least as impressed by its size as by its subject matter. It was a huge tome of a book, sitting there on the new arrivals shelf at my local library, all shiny in its protective plastic cover. The first several times that I checked it out, I think I mostly looked at the illustrations and read the captions beneath them. I had no clue who Joseph Dunninger was other than that his name was on the cover. Even today, I don't really know much about him. His heyday seems to have been the early part of the 20th century--according to the brief autobiography towards the back of the book, he performed for “... such men as Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft, Woodrow Wilson and Calvin Coolidge; as well as Thomas A. Edison on five different occasions, and H.R.H. the Prince of Wales.” Definitely before my time.

The book was apparently written as many separate books and/or articles over the years, and compiled into the present volume sometime after his death. As such, there's some repetition of effects, and quite a bit of jumping around from topic to topic. One page will be about card tricks best suited for close up performance, and then the next will be a big stage illusion. He rambles from séance effects to escapes to science projects to mentalism to ventriloquism to puppetry … His explanations can be sketchy, and he seems to take for granted that everyone has a well equipped shop in their home suitable for wood and metal working, as well as access to scientific apparatus and chemicals. Needless to say, as a child with limited arts and crafts skills, I found much of this daunting.

Still, there's some good material in here. I’ve actually used a few things over the years. In rereading it this most recent time, I realize I’d forgotten that I first saw, for instance, “The Mesmerized Salt-Cellar,” in these pages. All it takes for an old trick to become new is for someone to see the potential and come up with a fresh presentation.

If you're serious about learning magic, there are better books out there. But also if you're serious about learning magic, you're going to want to read everything about it that you can get your hands on. It's perhaps better for dipping into than reading straight through, but it provides an intriguing glimpse at what the state of the art for magic was like almost one hundred years ago. Recommended!

[lurker · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of illusions created and performed by the amazing magician Joseph Dunninger. It is dated, the explanations are sometimes hard to understand because of the old time wording. Many of the tricks seem strange, such as one that depends on the ladies in the room be horrified that a gentleman forgets to remove his hat on entering the room. This isn't really an encyclopedia, it is a collection of articles Dunninger wrote for a magician's magazine over many years. The book is mostly illustrations with little text and the illustrations are not particularly good. Despite it's age, if a reader concentrates and struggles through he will be rewarded with a real knowledge of how and why illusions work. Illusions of Cris Angel become simple to figure out using this knowledge. A 'must read' for the serious aspiring magician and not really for anybody else.

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dunninger’s Complete Encyclopedia of Magic by Joseph Dunninger (London: Spring Books 1967) (793.8) (3825).

Abracadabra and Presto-Chango! Watch closely, for the hand is quicker than the eye!

This is an instructional manual for prestidigitators. I reserved it from the public library, and HOLY COW: It literally teaches the secret “how tos” for all types of magic, from simple sleight-of-hand card tricks through the secrets of the preparation and use of the fanciest stage-magic contraptions (think Harry Houdini’s impossible escape tricks).

Joseph Dunninger died in 1975 after a long career as a stage magician. This book shares many of the secrets of his craft.

I was thrilled to find a book such as this! I’ve always been curious about how these illusions were created, and that’s exactly what this book demonstrates.

Sadly, however, I couldn’t enjoy the book, for it was unreadable to my 64 year old eyes! The hardback copy I read was a somewhat oversized volume published in the 1960s. The book is formatted so that when an illusion is introduced, there is a full page of explanatory instructional text, and the text is peppered with starkly-drawn black and white illustrations in cartoon-like form. These illustrations are hand-lettered by the artist just like in old comic books. For readers of my generation, the pages look exactly like the old books and single-panel newspaper comics published as “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not” by Robert Ripley.

The illustrations in Dunninger’s volume were great; they fit the author’s project precisely. The illustrations were not the reason that I couldn’t enjoy this book.

The reason I couldn’t read this was because of the size of the tiny text! While the illustrations were well drawn, each page was so sprinkled with drawings that the publishers had to shrink the author’s text into tiny little four or five point text to get it on the corresponding page! Many of these illusions are very complicated. The underlying instructions and explanations for the budding magician-reader are so intricate that the publisher had to shrink the text to an unreadable size in order to make it fit on the same page as the accompanying drawings.

I couldn’t read the text without a magnifying glass, and the book is 300 pages long. That’s too much work and would be way too frustration-inducing for this reader. Life is too short to spend it with a spyglass in hand.

I will thus continue to be identifiable at future magic shows as the old guy who remains totally mystified by the magician’s art. I have resigned myself to the fact that these illusions are actual magic for which there is no explanation - at least as far as I could tell from reading this book.

I guess this review officially designates me as an old you-know-what. NOW GET OFF MY LAWN!

My rating: 7/10, finished 6/26/23 (3825).

[Zeeshan Mahmud · Rating 5 out of 5]

Combed through every inset minutely and meticulously hoping to unearth some hidden gems during my childhood. (By childhood I mean eighteen.) This was in the early 2000s back when David Blaine was poppin'. Many magic trick cannot be either performed due to lack of resources (such as yogic burial) or just plain outdated for instance. Still filled with many gems that people might otherwise utlizie - even now, today.

And what a marvelous artistry of sketches and prints! Wow. Classic.

By the way, when Uri Gellar introduced David Blaine for the first time with his voiceover it was this Dunninger that the refernece was made with the quote: "To those who believe, no explanation is necessary. To those who don't, none will suffice."

[William Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating book for those interested in magic. However, beware! Dunninger plays tricks himself in this book by adding made up tricks - some of which are very dangerous. One example is to move objects by attaching string to pins and holding the pins in your eyelids. What idiot would do that? And there are much simpler ways. The idea was to confuse those wanting to know the secrets too. Very weird and something even Houdini never did. A great book nonetheless. Skip the pin trick though!! lol

[Serge Pierro · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read this book many times - and I have no interest in being a magician! I was just fascinated to scan through the tricks and see how they were done. Interesting stuff for the inquisitive mind (or someone interested in becoming a magician).

[Ki · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great book for kids.
And a great book for adults that are kid-like.