Ted Annemann - Annemann's Miracles of Card Magic

This is a volume of 78 good-sized, well-printed pages of text, illustrated with 27 Nelson Hahne drawings, and bound in soft boards. It is announced as consisting of "fifty-two of the finest card tricks with a borrowed deck known to America's leading magicians ... selected from the early files of The Jinx magazine." The book actually contains fifty-five, and not merely fifty-two, tricks. Sixteen are by Mr. Annemann himself, five by Martin Gardner, three each by Dr. Jacob Daley and Audley Walsh, two by Henry Christ, and one each by Al Baker, Dai Vernon, Jean Hugard, Stewart Judah, Bob Hummer, Lynn Searle’s, Tom Bowyer, and others whose names will be recognized promptly by those who read widely in the literature of magic.

If a compiler were to pick fifty-five items from The Jinx purely at random, he would almost inevitably have a valuable collection of tricks, because of the generally high standard that Annemann set for himself in publishing his little journal. But the material in the Full Deck of Impromptu Card Tricks was not got together by hazard; it was, on the contrary, selected and edited by John J. Crimmins, Jr., with a skill that we naturally expect him to exhibit in view of his previous success as an editor. He has seen to it that the tricks are described and explained in simple, straightforward English. He has also grouped the material under seven headings for the greater convenience of the reader. These headings, which give some idea of the types of tricks found in the book, are as follows:

Extemporaneous Magic. Tricks With Two Decks. Tricks Using "Short" Cards. Card Transpositions. Poker Demonstrations. Spelling Tricks. Simplified Prearrangements.

The difficulties of giving, in a short review, an adequate description of many tricks are not inconsiderable, and they become almost insurmountable in the case of card tricks of The Jinx type. Described very briefly, feats of this kind often sound more alike than they actually are, and also more complicated than they prove to be in actual practice. We shall content ourselves, therefore, with the statement (quoted from the foreword, and fully substantiated by a reading of the book) that the majority of these tricks "bear the earmarks of his [Annemann's] genius for substituting subtlety where difficult sleights would ordinarily have been called for." Upon second thought, we cannot refrain from suggesting that the last three pages of the book (which explain The Force That Couldn't Be Done, The "So Simple" Force, and The Indetectable Shift Palm) would in themselves be sufficient excuse for adding this volume to one's library. It should be remembered, also, that Annemann's Full Deck of Impromptu Card Tricks has illustrations which did not appear in the text as it was printed in The Jinx, and which add definitely to the clarity of the exposition.