A popular magician offers a guide to the most exotic entertainers in the history of showbusiness--from the amazing feats of handicapped individuals to the unusual talents of trained animals

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

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.

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.

Plato said God invented dice. This we learn from one of the fascinating essays, which take readers from the origins of dice to the myriad forms of cheating throughout history. Rosamond Purcell's luminous photographs transform dice made from unstable celluloid into an art form.