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La Magie des chaises a demandé cinq ans de travail.

Un jour pendant que James et moi-même étions en train de travailler sur un autre projet, il arrêta tout pour me montrer une maquette : « Regarde ça et dis-moi ce que tu en penses. » Cette maquette était celle de la MAGIE DES CHAISES. Je fus immédiatement enthousiasmé par ce sujet complètement nouveau et original, aucun auteur n’avait songé à réunir en un seul ouvrage tout ce que l’on peut faire magiquement avec des chaises ! Cette maquette était pleine d’idées et de dessins comme seul James savait les exprimer.

Nous revenions sur ce livre à chacune de nos rencontres, chaque fois c’était un feu d’artifice de nouvelles idées, à chaque élément s’en ajoutaient d’autres. Ce livre ne fut pas prêt pour les Congrès, par bonheur nous en avions préparé d’autres.

Hélas, nous avons perdu James en 2019. Vanina Hodges, aidée par Liliane, sa mère, avait suivi avec son père la préparation de ce livre : James avait terminé tous les dessins, Vanina a finalisé les textes et la mise en page du livre comme elle l’a fait pour de nombreux autres ouvrages de son père.

Lorsqu’elle m’a annoncé que le livre était enfin prêt et qu’elle allait me le faire parvenir, je ne sais pas si j’ai su lui exprimer toute la reconnaissance que j’éprouvais pour m’avoir fait confiance en continuant ce travail.

Liliane m’a confié le soin d’éditer ce livre, qui s’inscrit dans un cycle de cinquante années d’amitié et de collaboration avec James Hodges.

Xuxo Ruiz is a teacher and magician who found that by mixing both his passions he could be more helpful to children and teachers all over the world. Teaching with Magic got him nominated for the Global Teacher Prize.

The teachers I remember best from my childhood are the ones who made their classes more fun for me. It was fabulous having classes with them, we had such a great time together! They knew that first they needed to capture our attention. If they made the classes fun for us, we were more motivated and we had the desire to go to school. Sadly, a lack of motivation for learning is nowadays very common with most children and in most schools.
When I first started lecturing as a teacher, I would occasionally do magic tricks. Then I noticed the students’ attention and motivation for learning increased. It made me think of other educators, and I wondered… Could magic help schoolteachers? How would the students react? What techniques and tricks should a teacher use in class, and parents at home?
Then I felt the need to create a practical method for motivating students in their schools, and I created Educational Magic.
In the following years, I continued implementing my magic for educational purposes in the schools where I taught. From kindergarten and elementary school to high school, from my Physical Education classes to Art classes, across Math, Language, and Science… It was not just in order to motivate, but also in order to explain, mediate conflicts, influence the students’ conduct, and boost their self-esteem.
Fifteen years later, after investigating, studying, revising, adapting, practicing and applying hundreds of magic tricks at school, I have managed to arrive at the selection that you now hold in your hands.
All the tricks featured here have been tried out and evaluated with real students in real situations, and they are perfect for any teaching situation. The result of years of practical work, rehearsals, class hours, and magic…It’s all right here. Going through these pages, you will learn techniques that will surprise you with their efficacy. In your hands is the opportunity to learn, to be entertained, and of course to entertain others as you teach. You will surprise your students, you will thrill them, and you will make them think.
In my personal experience (and that of the teachers and parents who have taken part in my courses), it really works. Because of that I strongly believe in the enormous resource potential of what you are about to learn

Juan Tamariz teaches magicians that it is not the hands alone that deceive, but also the feet, the body, the eyes and the voice. It is only through a full understanding of all five of these tools of nature and communication that the conjurer can spin a complete web of illusion that traps and then transports his audiences into the astonishing realm he has prepared for them. These five tools are essential and invaluable to the stage conjurer and the close-up magician alike, and they are clearly analyzed and taught by Tamariz from his vantage point of years of successful professional performance in both venues. Tamariz enhances the clarity of his ideas and explanations with solid examples drawn from his own repertoire. There is no other book that so quickly, efficiently and entertainingly puts into the reader's hands the tools required to raise his performances to a level of true professionalism and draw his audiences into the world of magic. [editor summary]

Writing a history of stage magic, Steinmeyer reveals the secrets of such famous feats as hiding an elephant, one of Houdini's big tricks, as he details notable stage magicians' careers. He shows that this venerable entertainment genre is indubitably more illusion, performed by monumentally clever practitioners, than magic. Brother-and-sister mind-reading act Charles and Lilian Morritt perfected a silent code based on synchronized counting that defied cagey observers' abilities to detect, let alone understand. Charles went on to realize the sleight central to Houdini's disappearing elephant bit, and that is just one of the delicious connections Steinmeyer points out among performers who seem to constitute a fellowship. [editor summary]

This timeless material finally gets the treatment it deserves! The greatest collection of close-up tricks ever assembled between two covers, and Volume 1 has no card tricks included. Volume One's opening chapter, The Presentation of Close-Up Magic, embraces the whole approach to close-up performance. Hundreds of original illustrations by Dennis Patten. Volume Two features Phoa Yan Tiong's fantastic Cut and Restored Silk, Al Spackman's eerie and very baffling Miniature Rapping Hand, Rink's fabulous acrobatic Paper Clips and One Cup, Two Balls, Horace Bennett's Dissimilar Coin Thru Table, Bobby Bernard's terrific coin routine, Melted and Mirage, Jens Korth's brilliant Gambling Routine with Poker Chips, Lewis Ganson's tribute to Dai Vernon - Three Rings for Vernon. Hardbound, printed on acid-free paper, matching endsheets. [editor summary]

This timeless material finally gets the treatment it deserves! The greatest collection of close-up tricks ever assembled between two covers, and Volume 1 has no card tricks included. Volume One's opening chapter, The Presentation of Close-Up Magic, embraces the whole approach to close-up performance. Hundreds of original illustrations by Dennis Patten. Volume Two features Phoa Yan Tiong's fantastic Cut and Restored Silk, Al Spackman's eerie and very baffling Miniature Rapping Hand, Rink's fabulous acrobatic Paper Clips and One Cup, Two Balls, Horace Bennett's Dissimilar Coin Thru Table, Bobby Bernard's terrific coin routine, Melted and Mirage, Jens Korth's brilliant Gambling Routine with Poker Chips, Lewis Ganson's tribute to Dai Vernon - Three Rings for Vernon. Hardbound, printed on acid-free paper, matching endsheets. [editor summary]

Edward Victor was one of the greatest magicians who ever lived, who affected the work of almost every close-up magician working today. Dai Vernon and Ed Marlo, among many others, owed a major debt to the work of Edward Victor. His creations include the famous Eleven-Card Trick, which inspired Vernon's Spellbound and Coins and Champagne Glass. Victor's sleights inspired Tilt, Convincing Control and many others.

Edward Victor's story and magic are fascinating. This enormous book brings together a fascinating collection of magic and biography. It contains most of Edward Victor's many tricks that he contributed to periodicals and other books, his marketed items as well as unpublished routines from his private notebooks. It traces the story of his life with many unique photographs and other bits of memorabilia that recall the glory of a golden age. There is even a chapter on his Shadowgraphy.

This magic volume series was originally designed as a correspondence course for budding magicians. Once they were collected and bound, the series has become an unparalleled reference standard for magicians. In its impact on the magic world, it is second perhaps in its influence on the art of magic only to Hoffman's Modern Magic, and many professional magicians have based their careers on the Tarbell Course.

The entire collection comprises more than one-hundred lessons in every aspect of magic including micromagic/close-up magic, escapology, mentalism and stage illusions. It is the most comprehensive literary work in magic history. The original five volumes contained sixty correspondence lessons with more than 3,000 illustrations.

In addition to teaching specific tricks, The Tarbell Course also teaches patter, marketing, the history of magic, ethics, advertising, routining, presentation, diction and elocution, magic theory, performance theory, acting, misdirection, timing and showmanship.

Volume 7 of the series was written by Harry Lorayne and compiled from contributions by other magicians; it is valued largely for its comprehensive index, subdivided by title, contributor, and properties, to the first seven volumes.

Volume 8 of the series was compiled and edited by Richard J. Kaufman and Steve Burton. It collected Harlan Tarbell's widely scattered and previously uncollected writings on magic, which Kaufman then fashioned into something resembling the first six volumes of the course. Since most of the book was written and illustrated by Tarbell, it is linked more closely to the rest of the course than Volume 7.

Publié en 1902, ce livre est, et restera, LE chef-d’oeuvre consacré à l’art de manipuler les cartes.

Toutes les techniques qui y sont décrites sont aussi précieuses pour le cartomane contemporain qu’elles l’étaient pour celui d’il y a un siècle.

Cela est particulièrement vrai de l’analyse exhaustive que l’auteur consacre aux possibilités du mélange à la française, analyse qui n’a jamais été surpassée, malgré les centaines de livres qui ont été publiés depuis.

Mais la technique n’est pas tout; l’essentiel est ailleurs, à savoir : les principes intangibles sur les quels repose l’art de la magie des cartes. La manière de penser de l’auteur, sa philosophie de l’illusionnisme, sa compréhension profonde et totale des mécanismes liés à la création convaincante d’une illusion, c’est tout cela qui constitue la grande leçon de cet ouvrage.

Par l’importance qu’il donne à ces questions, et à bien d’autres comme l’attention aux détails, la sobriété et l’économie des mouvements, la motivation du moindre geste, il y a davantage à tirer de la lecture de l’ouvrage d’Erdnase que de l’apprentissage d’une douzaine de manipulations nouvelles.

L’Expert aux Cartes renferme la quintessence de l’art de la cartomagie, et les réflexions, conseils et recommandations distillés par l’auteur au fil des pages en font un ouvrage passionnant, un livre qui vaut de l’or pour tous les amoureux de la cartomagie.

Si l’on devait résumer l’importance de l’ouvrage d’Erdnase, on pourrait dire qu’il est à la magie des cartes ce que Magie et Mise en Scène est à la magie en général, c’est-à-dire une lecture indispensable pour quiconque veut être autre chose qu’un simple faiseur de tours, et transformer sa passion en art. [résumé de l'éditeur]