"Pick a card, any card".  Back before the days of Xbox I think that many kids were like me and went through a stage around age ten when magic tricks were fascinating.  Creating the illusion of fooling the grown-ups always carried a bit of a thrill.  Like most kid things, I moved on to some new stage - Atari? - and never looked back.   But in the decades following the Civil War, illusion and magic were delights for people of every age, supporting a large live entertainment industry and creating some of the superstar celebrities of the day.  In The Last Greatest Magician in the World, magic historian Jim Steinmeyer tells the story of one of the magic masters, Howard Thurston. 

Although I'd never heard of him before reading this book, Thurston was one of the most famous magicians of the early 20th century.  His stage shows mesmerized thousands over decades and much of the imagery that comes to mind when one hears the word "magician" was developed and refined by this man.  The book details his youth as a runaway teen peddler, pick pocket and con man, relying on his natural aptitude for sleight of hand and smooth talking.   He was entranced by Hermann the Great - the most famous magician during Thurston's youth - and often spent his last few cents to see the show just one more time.  His fascination with the psychology of deception and his love of the spotlight motivated him to strive for similar celebrity.  The book goes on to describe Thurston's eventual ascendancy to the title of greatest magician in the world.

But Thurston seemed destined to be forgotten.  While Houdini was immortalized by his amazing and unique escape illusions, Thurston - more famous in his time - served traditional fare like card tricks, disappearing acts, levitations and sawing women in half.   As his fame increased, he actually carried the seeds of his own demise, often incorporating some of Edison's new motion pictures into his show.  Hollywood would eventually eclipse the entire theatrical magic industry, leaving Doug Henning and David Copperfield as faint memories of its former greatness.

Over more than 300 pages, Steinmeyer tells Thurston's entire life story in unrelenting detail, striving to resurrect this forgotten piece of American history.  The author displays an incredible amount of historical knowledge and Thurston's unique story is a worthy subject, but I really struggled to finish this book.  A seemingly endless litany of traveling shows and illusions, squabbles about propriety, financial blunders and conflicts with Thurston's loser brother grows tiresome rather quickly.  While Steinmeyer clearly has a passion for the topic, his story telling skills leave plenty to be desired.

Beyond the sluggish and repetitive narrative, my biggest disappointment comes from the Houdini storyline.  The book's subtitle and introductory chapter create the illusion that the book is going to be some sort of spellbinding Mozart-Salieri saga, but it never really happens.  Houdini and Thurston were contemporaries and competitors in the magic marketplace, but they rarely had much direct contact and Houdini only appears a few times, in some of the most boring parts of the book. 

Maybe I'm not the target audience for this book.  I'm not a magician and I don't think I've ever been to a live magic show.  Maybe it's simply impossible to do justice to feats of magic using only the written word, similar to describing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony or the Mona Lisa.  You probably have to be there to really appreciate it.  Maybe in the hands of a gifted writer this book could work, but while he may be the world's foremost magic historian, Steinmeyer isn't up to the task and The Last Greatest Magician in the World fails to keep me captivated.  The elephant may have "disappeared", but I can still smell him. 



Biographies I liked better than this one:

Endgame - Bobby Fischer
The Lost Cyclist - Frank Lenz
Machiavelli: Philosopher of Power
Shakespeare: The World as Stage


Recommended: No