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Strange But True: THE WEIRD HISTORY OF MAGICIANS: Ancient Tricks, Vanishing Acts, Fake Ghosts, Dangerous Escapes, Secret Devices, Famous Hoaxes, and O
Paperback
Series: Sparktrail Strange But True, Book 48
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Sep 14 2026
Pages: 304
Weight: 0.81
Height: 0.76 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
What if the real history of magic is stranger than the tricks themselves?
Long before rabbits popped out of hats and assistants started disappearing into suspiciously small boxes, magicians were fooling kings, terrifying crowds, exposing fake ghosts, escaping impossible traps, and occasionally making decisions that were spectacularly bad for their health.
STRANGE BUT TRUE: THE WEIRD HISTORY OF MAGICIANS takes you behind the curtain for a hilarious journey through centuries of illusion, deception, showmanship, rivalry, and outright weirdness.
Meet ancient tricksters, Victorian superstars, escape artists, fake mediums, skeptical magicians, dangerous daredevils, and performers who built entire careers around convincing audiences that the impossible had just happened right in front of them.
Discover how Robert-Houdin helped transform magic into elegant theater, how Harry Houdini turned handcuffs and jail cells into worldwide publicity, why spiritualists claimed they could talk to the dead, how magicians fought back against fraudulent psychics, and why some performers risked everything for one unforgettable trick.
There are secret devices, spectacular hoaxes, disastrous stunts, famous feuds, strange patents, disappearing landmarks, talking ghosts, broken illusions, and more than a few moments when somebody really should have reconsidered the plan.
Funny, fascinating, and packed with bizarre true stories, this is not a book that teaches you how to perform magic. It tells the incredible story of the people who made generations of audiences gasp, laugh, argue, and ask the same question:
How did they do that?
Perfect for magic lovers, history fans, curious kids, aspiring magicians, and anyone who has ever stared at a magic trick and refused to believe what they just saw.
And if somebody is getting a magic set for Christmas or a birthday, this might be the perfect book to slip in beside it.
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