Billy McComb was one of the most influential platform magicians in the 20th Century. This is a collection of his magic, culled from lecture notes and small manuscripts. These are the final incarnations in the evolution of Billy McComb's magic!

What can magic tell us about ourselves and our daily lives? If you subtly change the subject during an uncomfortable conversation, did you know you're using attentional 'misdirection', a core technique of magic? And if you've ever bought an expensive item you'd sworn never to buy, you were probably unaware that the salesperson was, like an accomplished magician, a master at creating the 'illusion of choice'. Leading neuroscientists Stephen Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde meet with magicians from all over the world to explain how the magician's art sheds light on consciousness, memory, attention, and belief. As the founders of the new discipline of NeuroMagic, they combine cutting-edge scientific research with startling insights into the tricks of the magic trade. By understanding how magic manipulates the processes in our brains, we can better understand how we work - in fields from law and education to marketing, health and psychology - for good and for ill.

This book is a classic of magic and includes Dai Vernon's linking rings moves and cups and balls routine. It uses high quality B&W photos throughout to show many of the moves. Each routine ends with an outline of the routine, which is great for practicing from. Highly Recommended.CONTENTS IN BRIEF INCLUDEForeword: How the Book Came To Be, and Some Introductory Remarks by Dai VernonIntroduction: About Writing the Book, by Lewis GansonB&W Photo of "The Professor"Chapter 1: The Background to a Legend. Biographical notes on the magical life of Dai VernonChapter 2: The Vernon Touch. Lots of anecdotes about other magicians such as Nate Leipzig, Malini, and others.Chapter 3: A Chinese Classic. Routine for Coins Through the Table.Chapter 4: Penetration of Thought. Chapter 5: Three Ball Transposition. Chapter 6: Application of the Tenkai Palm. Chapter 7: The Linking Rings. Chapter 8: Seven Card Monte. Chapter 10: Expansion of Texture: Copper & Silver placed in hanky.Chapter 11: The Challenge. Chapter 12: Dai Vernon's Double Lift: with a well covered get ready.Chapter 13: The Cups & Balls. Dai Vernon's routine is a must study for effectiveness and routining. Chapter 14: Nate Leipzig's Card Stab.Chapter 15: Tips on Knots.Chapter 16: Six Card Repeat.Chapter 17: Free and Unlimited Coinage of Silver.Chapter 18: Mental Spell.Chapter 19: Pot Pourri. Chapter 20: Ball, Cone, and Handkerchief. Chapter 21: The Last Trick of Dr. Jacob Daley: Four Ace Transposition packet trick.Chapter 22: Paul Rosini's Impromptu Thimble Routine.Chapter 23: Vernon Poker Demonstration (Thanks to Jay Marshall). Chapter 24: The Thumb Tie: a full routine.

Hunter S. Thompson, “smart hillbilly,” boy of the South, born and bred in Louisville, Kentucky, son of an insurance salesman and a stay-at-home mom, public school-educated, jailed at seventeen on a bogus petty robbery charge, member of the U.S. Air Force (Airmen Second Class), copy boy for Time, writer for The National Observer, et cetera. From the outset he was the Wild Man of American journalism with a journalistic appetite that touched on subjects that drove his sense of justice and intrigue, from biker gangs and 1960s counterculture to presidential campaigns and psychedelic drugs. He lived larger than life and pulled it up around him in a mad effort to make it as electric, anger-ridden, and drug-fueled as possible. Now Juan Thompson tells the story of his father and of their getting to know each other during their forty-one fraught years together. He writes of the many dark times, of how far they ricocheted away from each other, and of how they found their way back before it was too late. He writes of growing up in an old farmhouse in a narrow mountain valley outside of Aspen—Woody Creek, Colorado, a ranching community with Hereford cattle and clover fields . . . of the presence of guns in the house, the boxes of ammo on the kitchen shelves behind the glass doors of the country cabinets, where others might have placed china and knickknacks . . . of climbing on the back of Hunter’s Bultaco Matador trail motorcycle as a young boy, and father and son roaring up the dirt road, trailing a cloud of dust . . . of being taken to bars in town as a small boy, Hunter holding court while Juan crawled around under the bar stools, picking up change and taking his found loot to Carl’s Pharmacy to buy Archie comic books . . . of going with his parents as a baby to a Ken Kesey/Hells Angels party with dozens of people wandering around the forest in various stages of undress, stoned on pot, tripping on LSD . . . He writes of his growing fear of his father; of the arguments between his parents reaching frightening levels; and of his finally fighting back, trying to protect his mother as the state troopers are called in to separate father and son. And of the inevitable—of mother and son driving west in their Datsun to make a new home, a new life, away from Hunter; of Juan’s first taste of what “normal” could feel like . . . We see Juan going to Concord Academy, a stranger in a strange land, coming from a school that was a log cabin in the middle of hay fields, Juan without manners or socialization . . . going on to college at Tufts; spending a crucial week with his father; Hunter asking for Juan’s opinion of his writing; and he writes of their dirt biking on a hilltop overlooking Woody Creek Valley, acting as if all the horrible things that had happened between them had never taken place, and of being there, together, side by side . . . And finally, movingly, he writes of their long, slow pull toward reconciliation . . . of Juan’s marriage and the birth of his own son; of watching Hunter love his grandson and Juan’s coming to understand how Hunter loved him; of Hunter’s growing illness, and Juan’s becoming both son and father to his father . . .