Really not a good book. This book is contrived, meandering, disjointed, and very poorly researched. The author keeps mentioning that as a journalist he is a storyteller, but sadly he’s terrible at this, his stories all basically boil down to either all his new friends are fantastic, or pointless stuff about his childhood. He also frequently contradicts himself, for example, he chastises Houdini for being a terrible card magician, then just a page or two later says that Dai Vernon must have been an amazing magician because he managed to fool Houdini with a card trick. He also frequently gets dates, or the order of famous magic events in the wrong order and even gets the nationality of famous magicians wrong. I would have given up long before reaching the end of the book, but I found it fascinating to see what he was going to get wrong next. If you want a book about the author being in love with Daniel Madison and Chris Ramsay, this is totally the book for you, however, if you want a book about magic, look elsewhere.
