Wonders and the Conference Illusions by Mike Caveney - Book

From Mike Caveney:

It took five years to complete this set of books that document virtually everything I have performed during my career. When I started, I had no idea that the finished product would fill two volumes with over 700 pages. As a long time collector of books and because this will be my legacy, I decided to make the finished product as nice as I possibly could. And now that they are finished I can honestly say that they are everything I had hoped for.

I knew that I could write up the methods, theories, history and funny stories about each routine but I also knew that illustrating them would be a problem. I am no artist. That’s when my long time friend and Hollywood special effects man, Bill Taylor, came to the rescue. Bill turned my basement into a photo studio and for fourteen months we shot pictures. Many hundreds of them made it into the finished books and they are the clearest explanatory photos I have ever seen in a magic book. Because both of these books are printed in full color, each tiny detail is visible.

Volume I is called Mike Caveney Wonders and it contains all of the routines that I have performed going back to my days as a teenage magician in the Long Beach Mystics right up to my current act that includes Magic Paper, The Bow & Arrow and Scissors, Coat, Silverware & Chicken. More than just a How-To book, I have described the creative process behind each routine. In the case of Magic Paper (the torn, restored and animated toilet paper) I have explained all five methods that I have used and why each one was discarded in favor of a new version and why I stuck with method five for nearly thirty years. The goal is to teach and encourage the readers how to create their own original routines. A peek at the table of contents reveals the variety of material.

Mike Caveney Wonders:

• Foreword by Mac King
• 9 by 11½ inches
• 456 pages printed in full color on heavy art matte paper
• 570 photographs
• Printed endsheets with a tipped-in color frontis-piece
• 3-color foil stamping on the cover

Volume II is called The Conference Illusions and it is a completely different type of book. During the past twenty-two years I have recreated a number of long-forgotten tricks and illusions for the Los Angeles Conference on Magic History and each one posed its own unique challenges. In some instances I had the original apparatus that once belonged to Howard Thurston or Charles Carter and other times the equipment had to be built from scratch. The book chronicles the research into the history of the illusion, the original routines, how we attempted to improve the mechanics of the apparatus, re-think the presentation and design a routine that was suitable for a modern audience. After their debut performance at the History Conference a number of these effects were presented dozens of times for lay audiences at the Magic Castle and were found to be highly effective a hundred or more years after their creation. Each chapter includes vintage photographs and posters from the files of Egyptian Hall Museum as well as behind-the-scenes and action photos or the performances. Few readers will add any of these mysteries to their acts but there is much to be learned from studying ideas that were created by the greatest minds from magic’s Golden Age.

The Conference Illusions

• Foreword by Jim Steinmeyer
• 9 by 11½ inches
• 256 pages printed in full color on heavy art matte paper
• 330 photographs
• Printed end-sheets
• 2-color foil stamping on the cover

Both books are housed in a matching slipcase with foil stamped side. Sold only as a set. Published in 2013, and currently out of print...but we have one and only one at the shop!