Review

In the 1953 movie Houdini starring Tony Curtis as Harry Houdini and Janet Leigh as his wife, Bess, Houdini died in the Chinese Water Torture Cell, but what is true about Houdini and what is not is often blurred. The rendition in the movie is dramatic, but not true. The truth is that when an exhausted Houdini was on tour in 1926 performing in Montreal at the Princess Theatre, he was asked by a man if he still had a standing challenge for anyone to punch him in the stomach. When the man delivers three severe punches to the stomach and then several more as he falls over, Houdini is in agony, likely that he was already suffering from appendicitis. He never recovers and dies a few days later at a Detroit hospital. There is fact and there is fiction surrounding stories about Harry Houdini (1874-1926) still being told 94 years after his death. There is still something "magic" about his name and Joe Posnanski, a best-selling author and long-time sports writer, peppers this book with anecdotes and events about Houdini. Born Erik Weisz (later Ehrich Weiss) in Budapest, Hungary, he called himself Harry Houdini when he became a magician, named after the French magician Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin. He was best known for his sensational escape acts from breaking out of chains, ropes slung from skyscrapers, straitjackets under water, and escape from a large milk can filled with water. Although he stood at the center of the world of magic, he was considered less of a pure "magician" in this world and more as an escape artist. Houdini is at the center of this book, but I read it as an ode to the world of magic and wonder, and stories about other magicians and their talents are offered, particularly David Copperfield. Born David Seth Kotkin, he is described by Forbes as the most commercially successful magician in history. Readers who have seen his performance, notably in Las Vegas or on a TV special, will readily attest to his sleight-of-hand and his illusionist acts. Like Houdini, a maker of miracles, Posnanski's book sparkles with his exposure of the world of magic and the continued "magic" of the fearless, fascinating, and A-1 self-promoter, Harry Houdini.

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