This excursion into the history of bizarre entertainments includes armless calligraphers, mathematical dogs, tightrope-walking fleas and assorted quacks, flimflammers and charlatans of spectacle.

An informal history of sensational, scientific, silly, satisfying, and startling attractions based on seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth-century broadsides from Ricky Jay's extraordinary collection.

Profiles unique entertainers, including musical prodigies, cannon-ball catchers, conmen, card cheats, and other side-show performers and oddities.

Originally published: New York: Times Books, 1979.

A tongue-in-cheek look at the newest method of self-defense details the history of card-throwing, exercises to improve your throwing ability, and fantastic stunts

Well before Evel Knievel or Hollywood stuntmen, reality television or the X Games, North America had a long tradition of stunt performance, of men (and some women) who sought media attention and popular fame with public feats of daring. Many of these feats—jumping off bridges, climbing steeples and buildings, swimming incredible distances, or doing tricks with wild animals—had their basis in the manual trades or in older entertainments like the circus. In The Thrill Makers, Jacob Smith shows how turn-of-the-century bridge jumpers, human flies, lion tamers, and stunt pilots first drew crowds to their spectacular displays of death-defying action before becoming a crucial, yet often invisible, component of Hollywood film stardom. Smith explains how these working-class stunt performers helped shape definitions of American manhood, and pioneered a form of modern media celebrity that now occupies an increasingly prominent place in our contemporary popular culture.

Published to accompany the exhibition "Wordplay: Matthais Buchinger's inventive drawings from the collection of Ricky Jay" held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, January 5-April 11, 2016.