The Great Dunninger

Today, marks the 119th birthday of the man who is arguably America's Greatest Mentalist, Joseph Dunninger. After having researched and written blogs about Robert Heller, William Fay, The Davenport Brothers, Anna Eva Fay, The Great Alexander and others involved in the world of mentalism and magic, I thought it might be time to do some research on the man who became synonymous with mental feats and mind reading.

Lafayette's Other Fire

The article about Beauty & Lafayette turned out to be very popular. I thought my readers might enjoy a little more information about the man who was once Sigmund Neuberger. If you read the other blog you know that The Great Lafayette died tragically in a theatre fire. But it turns out that was not the first fire that Lafayette was involved in.

Thurston Book Review

I just finished reading "The Last Greatest Magician" by Jim Steinmeyer. This is the recent biography that Jim did on Howard Thurston. It's been sitting on my shelf for a while, wanting to be read but NOT being read. The main reason was that so many others were reading and giving reviews that I wanted to hold off until it all calmed down a bit.

My favorite books are biographies. I have a huge library of biographies of famous magicians. Naturally there are more Houdini titles that anything else, but the second largest group are books on Thurston. Not all are biographies, but there are a few Thurston titles which include: My Life of Magic by Howard Thurston, The Complete Life of Howard Franklin Thurston V 1-2 by Robert Olsen, The Howard Thurston Illusion Show Workbooks V. 1-2, My Magic Husband by Grace Thurston and there are a few other titles I don't have in front of me at the moment.