Harry Houdini Books

This is a picture book biography of Houdini. It tells us about his life. It tells us that he practiced his tricks a lot and never gave up on his dreams of becoming a master escape king. The book tells of some of his most famous tricks.




What did you like or not like about the book?

The story is simple and straight forward it should appeal to young readers.




Would you recommend the book? Why or Why not?

Kids who want to learn more about the life of Houdini should read this book.

I feel cheated. I spent quite a few days reading this bit of useless nonsense. It started off okay with considerable accuracy regarding Conan Doyle and Houdini. But that all faded pretty quickly.

For the most part, it was just a pastiche of '20s popular history with this personage or that being either mentioned or showing up.

An ongoing appearance of the "ghost" of Poe never got resolved. "Scooby Doo" cartoons manage to do a much better job of tying up loose phantasmic threads.

The ending scene refers to the Poe story "The Oblong Box." I went back to the text of that tale to try to make sense out of the rectangular basket that Conan Doyle, at Houdini's request, throws into the Atlantic. It didn't work for me. If anyone has a comment that can clarify, I'd be happy to see it.

This book is utter tripe so I don't feel bad about the spoilers in the last couple of paragraphs. If you run into a cheap copy at the local thrift store, leave it there. Even at 50 cents, "Nevermore" is a total rip.

Hjortsberg has created an interesting recipe for his novel. The characters of Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are the main ingredients. Throw in a farm girl who thinks she's the reincarnation of Isis. Set the story in 1923 New York City and have the characters cross paths with Damon Runyon, W. C. Fields, Fanny Brice, and other notables of the jazz age. Spice these ingredients with Houdini's amazing illusions and Doyle's belief in the occult. Add a few pinches of romance. Stir up the mixture with a killer inspired by the stories of Poe.

One has to suspend belief to enjoy this concoction, but once the reader can do that, s/he will discover that Hjortsberg has managed to combine these improbable elements into a fun mystery.

It won't take much for the avid mystery fan to figure out whodunit, but that won't dim the enjoyment of being pulled into the age of crystal sets, speakeasies, flappers, and vaudeville. And, of course we know the killer will have to be hideously clever to outwit both Houdini and the creator of Sherlock Holmes.

NEVERMORE is like Houdini's magic ---only an illusion.

Houdini and Conan Doyle are two of my favorite people from history. This story was fun and enjoyable. It reminded me of "The Alienist" quite a bit, too. It is fun stuff--spritualism, magic, illusion, detective work...all
happening during a great time in history.

William Hjortsberg's "Nevermore" brings together Harry Houdini, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a serial killer emulating Edgar Allan Poe's stories, and a host of real characters from the 1920s. Sherlock Holmes's creator is in the United States delivering a series of lectures on spiritism, and Houdini is playing his usual role as a skeptic. The two inevitably run into each other time and time again, and they form a friendship, one that is tried to some degree by their different philosophies. While they are going about their businesses, a killer is dispatching victims in ways that are taken from Poe tales. And at the same time, a woman calling herself Isis is performing supernatural feats that Houdini cannot explain away.

If the story sounds busy, that's because it is. The various threads seem to coexist without mingling for quite some time. In fact, the serial killer all but disappears for a substantial portion of the second half of the novel. With the standard suspense aspect thusly diminished, the novel becomes more of a combination of a period piece and an exploration into the two men's obsession with supernatural phenomena. The historical aspect of the mystery often works well, though Hjortsberg does seem to revel a bit much in the minutiae of the period, from cigarette brands to characters. The supernatural aspect does not work, as Houdini is clearly the loser; there is never really any doubt but that spirits exist and influence the world. Also, it should be noted that Houdini's character, while heroic, is also decidedly unflattering, especially in his dealings with Isis.

"Nevermore" begins with a great deal of promise but ultimately fails to fulfill that promise as the threads never mesh entirely satisfactorily. While Hjortsberg writes well for the most part, he never truly unites the several threads, and a few of them are left dangling.

The story went very slow at first and it's really for us busy readers to hold on as it's really hard to get the story line at first. That's why the first half of the story is so boring. But then if you go on reading it, the first half isn't wasted at all and they are all well-planned. Well, but it goes so slow..

I would reccomend this buy for any magic enthusiast because it's history. No, it's not gone, but it contains the writings of Erich Weiss. I wouldn't say that I got a lot of trick ideas for my own act out of this book. However, it is just fascinating to read and to imagine Houdini as he created this compilation.

It's well-known among Houdini buffs that much of Houdini's writing was ghostwritten for him. So what? This was part of his role as a master publicist. Nevertheless, this book is a great insight into Houdini's mind and methods, because it's certain that he had at least a hand in the production of all of the material in this book. There is no single book that gives a greater insight into the scope of Houdini's interests than this one.

I was disapointed in this book because there is only a few pages written by Harry Houdini. There was also added material that had nothing to do with Houdini.
Not Recomended

It is commonly said that you should never read a book on magic tricks unless you are willing to learn a trick and show it to your friends and not tell the secret. Disclaimers aside, this book has material useful for beginners, and for those who wish to make complex apparatus and only a few of the tricks might pose a risk to your life. The material on fraud commit by mediums is very interesting. It can further be said that Houdini was a very good writer.

This book is simply fantastic. It contains a large amount of Houdini's writings from articles, books, etc. It contains Houdini's famous "Margery the Medium" pamplet where he exposes her false methods, explains in Houdini's words how he escapes from a straitjacket, and also tells about an illusion that Houdini was thinking about performing, but never did. A wonderful book with many pictures and illustrations.

Not very captivating... unless you know alot about Houdini

The novel describes how the "Scientific American" in 1923 starts a special contest (to raise its sagging circulation): everyone who can give proof that there is life after death and you can get in contact with the spirits of the deceased, that one can divine the future, do something supernatural ... will win a price money of several thousand dollars. Spirtism was a great hype at this time. The "Scientific American" choses as judges Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (creator of Sherlock Holmes who in later years turned spiritist and believer in ghosts, divination, etc.) and Harry Houdini (rational magician who always worked to reveal self-proclaimed spiritists as fraudsters who are making money from people mourning for their lost ones).

The interesting and rather surprising fact about this storyline is: it is true! Of course the dialogues, several details and several supporting characters are more or less made up for the book, but the general background events really happened - so it makes the book a very interesting reading. You learn more about the lifes of Harry Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle (everything seems to be well researched by the authors as far as I can say from looking some of it up in biographies). And the authors try to present Doyle's and Houdini's points of view without unfair prejudgement and give reasons and "proofs" for both views. But that's also the thing that might dissatisfy the reader most, especially if he does not believe in spiritism, like me, because some of those "proofs" for supernatural powers given in the novel are obviously made up for "artistical" reasons.

This was by no means a master work. But I found it engaging as a yarn and insightful as a treatment of Houdini, and of his time battling to expose shadowy mediums and hucksters. I read it all in one big gulp and wanted more.

a work of republished and copied photos of Harry. Its nice to have them all together and even some photos that are not found elsewhere. The publisher and or author would have more praise if the photos were clearer and more refined and not so dark . Some looked as if they were photocopied out of someone elses photocopy book.... I would have liked to compare this edition with first printing to see if there was a difference.. many other books with some of the same photos show a definite clarity in reproduction.

excellent info on Houdini...be aware that all illus. are black/whit

This book is a reprint of Christopher's "Houdini A Pictorial Life" published in 1976. Compared to the original, it's a rather poor reprint. The quality of the B&W photos are much degraded and one of the original book's two color pages is now B&W (the other is missing entirely). Still, the photos in this book - many showing Houdini in action - are terrific and very rare. The original book can be hard to find and tends to sell for $30 and up. But if you're going to hunt (and pay) then hunt down instead "Houdini His Legend and His Magic" by Doug Henning. This is the best of the four "coffee table" size Houdini books done in the late '70s. If you're looking for a definitive Houdini biography (more content than photos) I recommend "Houdini! The Career of Ehrich Weiss" by Ken Silverman.

This is a book about Harry Houdini. Harry Houdini grew up with four brothers and one sister. He is famous for escaping safes, handcuffs and walking on tightropes. He was introduced to magic at the age of seven. On his journey Harrry Houdini became one of the most famous magicians in the world.
Houdini performed for more than one million people in his lifetime. After his greatest trick he passed away.
I do not think this was a good book because it did not have a lot of information about Harry Houdini. Also, it did not tell when or where Harry Houdini was born. There were some confusing words. I would recommend this book as a good story but not for school use.

As most people know, Harry Houdini was one of the greatestmagicians and escape artists ever known. The author was pretty goodat telling his childhood story, yet sometimes it was confusing. Maybeit because I wasn't concentrating the whole time. Even though I didn't enjoy the whole book, I would still encourage people to read it.

I think the combination of the academic sounding subtitle, and the rather lurid cover art illustrate the problem this book presents; it never seems to be sure whether it's trying to be PH.d thesis or a potboiler.

The story it tells is fascinating, to be sure. It's remarkable to reflect how much social and technological turmoil the US was in during the time period examined, and how much of a struggle life was for many. This is the context from which Sandow, Houdini and Borroughs arose, and the authors thesis seems quite sound. But it's not particularly coherently developed. And the biographical details are a bit uneven. I found myself wishing for a deeper discussion of the flaws of the "Perfect Man" that Sandow, Houdini and Tarzan represented, perhap unfairly, for the book sets out to tell the start of Beefcake as an ideal, not it's whole sorry history.

A worthy read, but not as compelling as I wanted it to be.

This relatively short and well-illustrated book presents brief portraits of three contemporaries from the turn of the last century: bodybuilder Engen Sandow, escape artist Harry Houdini, and the fictional Tarzan (as well as his creator Edgar Rice Burroughs). Kasson's thesis is twofold: that their popularity was emblematic of the insecurity that white males felt in an increasingly bureaucratic world that threatened racial, sexual, and cultural hegemony and that their semi-mythical qualities were instrumental in changing the collective sense of the ideal man.

These stories are undeniably fascinating and informative, and Kasson's thesis is fairly straightfoward. Because Kasson's argument seems easily supported, he is able to focus more on biographical rather than thematic details and includes much information that is not necessary to his argument. As a result, I found myself wishing several times that I were reading instead the three major biographies on which much of his narrative is based: David Chapman's "Sandow the Magnificent," Kenneth Silverman's "Houdini!!!," and Irwin Porges's "Edgar Rice Burroughs."

A terrific storyteller, Kasson is likewise unable to avoid including several vignettes that have no direct bearing on his thesis. This is not necessarily a bad thing: his account of female impersonator Julian Eltinge is certainly intriguing, but this section seems peripheral to his discussion. Likewise, he discusses Houdini's obsession with debunking spiritualists, especially Mina ("Margery") Crandon, but it's never really quite clear what this has to do with societal perceptions of the white male body. Kasson attempts, unconvincingly, to present this as a battle of the sexes, but admits that Houdini directed his ire toward all psychic charlatans, regardless of their sex. Margery just happened to be among the most "talented" of the spiritualists. When he does finally return to his thesis, the prose turns to semi-parodic academic-speak: "In exposing Margery's fraud, Houdini also exposed her as a woman who, despite all her guides and talents, could only sham the phallus."

Fortunately, these occasional faults seldom mar the overall presentation. Not only did I enjoy these tales, but Kasson has piqued my interest enough to make me want to read more about these three paragons of "masculinity."

Although not a literary work of art, this book is a must read for anyone who is interested in Houdini and his life.

Barbara Michaels is one of the pseudonyms for Egyptologist and mystery / suspense writer Barbara Mertz, and she's also known - better known, these days - as Elizabeth Peters. The `Michaels' books were immensely popular at one time, and I've always preferred them over the Peters novels, primarily because the Michaels books were usually supernatural mysteries rather than your usual crime/murder mysteries. That's why it's appropriate that she wrote this particular book under the Michaels name.

It's a departure from everything else she's done, and it's a terrific concept. She sets the stage in your mind's eye of a dark, foggy night in London, deep in the inner sanctum of one of those luxurious men's clubs of the Victorian era, and gathered within are none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Harry Houdini, Frank Podmore (founder of the Society for Psychical Research) and a mystery woman we tend to think is the author herself. Together, these legends of mystery, magic and the occult decide to analyze two notorious, early 19th century ghost stories: that of the Tennessee Bell Witch and the Phelps haunting in Connecticut.

One of the group will tell the story so that the reader can go back and re-live it, and then we come back to the present so that each `expert' can give an opinion as they smoke cigars and drink brandy. They banter and argue back and forth, each with a different take on the events.

This was probably one of the most creative and entertaining ways to analyze these two famous cases, and, spoken like a true fangirl, I say only Barbara Michaels could have told it.

(for a thorough telling of the Bell Witch story, by the way, I recommend An American Haunting by Brent Monahan, which is a reproduction of a manuscript written by Betsy Bell's husband, Richard Powell. I don't know of a similar book about the Phelps haunting, though.)

In this novel, Barbara Michaels uses the device of a club in Victorian London populated by (the ghosts of?) Harry Houdini, Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, and others who gather to discuss famous paranormal cases. The men in the club ponder all the known facts about the matters and then offer their opinions as to the nature of the events. In some cases the noted gentlemen argue that the cases were fraud and in others that genuine preternatural forces were at work.

The two incidents covered in Other Worlds were the infamous Bell Witch haunting of antebellum Tennessee, and a less famous but in some ways more shocking case--equally grounded in fact--of a New England family of the mid-1800's, whose home was seemingly invaded by a very creepy poltergeist phenomenon that begins making strange, eerie noises, moves on to rearranging furniture (while the family is IN the home) and from there proceeds from creating menacing "dolls" of each family member, twisted and shaped out of articles of the family's clothing. The case, inexplicably forgotten today except in the most scholarly of paranormal journals, reaches a crescendo I won't give away here but which surely, if true, reveals something stunning about what we hold to be reality.

This book seems to have frustrated some because it does not conclusively debunk or confirm these cases, it tells the details as they are known, composes some possible explanations, and then lets the reader form her own views. I think many wanted a revelation along the lines of "this is how it happened". And of course that's impossible.

This is a fun book for those who have an interest in events that fall outside what we like to feel are "everyday mundane" and its literary tone makes a nice touch considering the period the stories took place in.

Other Worlds is an interesting read and is a departure in style from Michael's normal prose style. It has two stories happening in parallel that are brought together through annecdote and seance. The narrative style took some getting used to even thought I've read lots of her books before.

I had not read any of her works as either Barbara Michaels or Elizabeth Peters before, so this was my introduction to her work. This mystery is actually two stories in one, with each story around 100-120 pages long. I preferred the first to the second; both dealt with families being tormented by a spirit of some kind or poltergeist activity. At the close of each story, the ghostly gentleman's club - including Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - draw various conclusions. Thus there is not just one right answer, but instead various opinions and scenarios. Good work, quick read, fun for classic mystery / poltergeist fans.

I had waited sooo long for this novel to come out, and when its all been read and done, it was bad. boring and slow, with no intrest at all the novel just never hit it off. I love Barbara Michaels, but this just was not her.

Houdini was very famous in his day. He could escape from anything, make things disapper before peoples' very eyes. Walt Disney was a very famous cartoonist, he was the one who created Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse,Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Pluto, Goofy, etc.
The book is very historic and informal. My opinion, its okay ,but not that okay.
The irony of this book is that you would think that Houdini would be a shoe shine boy, but instead he becomes a magician.
I recommend this people who like Harry Houdini or Walt Disney.