As a former very amateur kid magic nerd (without the hand-eye coordination required to make me GOOD at it), I still love reading about performance magic, magicians, etc, whether it's how tricks have been/used to be done, kinds of magic performance, etc. A couple of interesting ones I read in the last year or two are The Magician and the Cardsharp by Karl Johnson (about Dai Vernon and the quest to determine the identity of SW Erdnase) and The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini by Joe Posnanski, both of which I really enjoyed.
I prefer books that focus on particular kinds of performance magic, how magicians have approached performing, a historical approach to performance magic, the subculture/fandom of performance magic, etc. I am not interested in the kind of pop psych/pop sci/pop anthro "this is how they fool you" sort of thing- more about the actual performance and culture. I'm also not interested in straight-up "how it's done" step by step books- I have a bunch already and at a certain point they're not helpful when I'll never have the skills lol. I'm looking for nonfiction narratives and/or investigations about performance magic, about magicians, about historical trends related to magic performance, etc.
I'm finding books like this thin on the ground in my local library, and searching online tends to get you a lot of biographies of Houdini (there's only so many one can read…), pop psych books, and the step by step sort of thing. I'm okay with a more memoir/autobiographical approach as long as it also includes actual content lol.
Thanks!
by hannahstohelit