Fooling Houdini - Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks And The Hidden Powers Of The Mind (Epub,Mobi) Gooner

Fooling Houdini: Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks, and the Hidden Powers of the Mind by Alex Stone


Format: mobi/epub
Genre: Magic
Print Length: 321 pages
Release Date: 5 July 2012

A PhD candidate in physics at Columbia University, Alex Stone is also part of the underground magic circuit, an exclusive community whose members convene regularly in pizza parlours and coffee shops to swap tips and develop new illusions. Determined to take his lifelong hobby to the professional level, Stone embarks on a personal quest to reach the pinnacle of this bizarre world, and become a master magician.

But he has some learning to do.

In Fooling Houdini, we journey through a strange and colourful subculture of obsessive, brilliant and dysfunctional geniuses - blind card sharps, street-hustlers and Las Vegas showmen - learning the principles and history of some of the greatest tricks ever performed. Seeking answers to broader questions about decision making, the limits of perception, and the nature of deception, Stone helps us understand what happens as we attempt to distinguish reality from illusion, and discovers the link between magic and psychology, physics and even crime.

But his journey is more than a tale of tricks, gigs, and geeks. By investing some of the lesser-known corners of psychology, neuroscience, physics, history, and even crime, all through the lens of trickery and illusion, Fooling Houdini arrives at a host of startling revelations about how the mind works - and why, sometimes, it doesn’t.

Author:

Alex Stone has written for The New York Times, Harper's, Discover, and The Wall Street Journal. He graduated from Harvard University and has a master's degree in physics from Columbia University. He grew up in Wisconsin, Texas, and Spain. He currently lives in New York City.