Reviews
The Secret History of Magic: The True Story of the Deceptive Art by Peter Lamont, Jim Steinmayer
brontherun's review against another edition
3.0
The joy of reading history is that we repeatedly see our current struggles and ourselves in the past and can get glimpses of how things were resolved or exacerbated. There is a reason why the saying goes if we fail to learn from history that we are doomed to repeat it. Initially, I was not sure The Secret History of Magic would be as relevant as it appeared very focused. I was glad to be proven wrong.
The book takes you on a journey of the evolving role of magic in through the last few hundred years. As psychology and science developed, so did the audiences understanding of magic and so did the magicians understanding of the audience. So, as science and psychology defined the scope of what was possible and how the mind works, magic adapted to continue to exploit these boundaries. All of that is covered as magicians of their own times – Victorian, Golden Age, Television Age, etc. – adapt and continue to find ways to earn a living with their art. The authors leave no doubt of the supported argument that magic is a performance art. For magic, like all art, perception is key. With magic, the difference is that deception is also necessary.
The exploration of the history of deception is where the historical lessons of the book become most relevant to the modern struggle to understand the delineation between what is seen and what is to be believed. Lamont and Steinmeyer remind us, “We tend to believe what we are told and to see what we expect to see. We notice things that confirm our beliefs and interpret new information in line with our existing theories. As a result, we sometimes believe in things that are not really there.” Yep, that exactly relates to our daily bafflement of the internet, cable news, politicians, and media outlets.
I think what they want us to walk away with, is that in magic, we get that we are being deceived. We know that they will attempt to deceive us, and when the good magician succeeds, we are happily surprised, even if we have multiple thoughts of how the trick could have been achieved. With the world knocking at our screens and our brains for attention, we are being asked to trust. We find out we are being deceived only if we can step back enough to broaden our vision beyond our narrow daily vision, our confirmation bias, and our personal experiences. And that is hard. And it takes time. We should learn from the history of magic that our brains and our eyes are going to need to be questioned not when we are being entertained by magicians, but when we are dealing with the real tricksters out there. Enjoy the talented art of magic where you can be safely deceived to everyone’s enjoyment. Beware of how your mind and eyes may be deceiving you elsewhere. Those other folks, like a good magician, know how to narrow your focus, divert your attention, and make an elephant disappear right in front of you.
The book takes you on a journey of the evolving role of magic in through the last few hundred years. As psychology and science developed, so did the audiences understanding of magic and so did the magicians understanding of the audience. So, as science and psychology defined the scope of what was possible and how the mind works, magic adapted to continue to exploit these boundaries. All of that is covered as magicians of their own times – Victorian, Golden Age, Television Age, etc. – adapt and continue to find ways to earn a living with their art. The authors leave no doubt of the supported argument that magic is a performance art. For magic, like all art, perception is key. With magic, the difference is that deception is also necessary.
The exploration of the history of deception is where the historical lessons of the book become most relevant to the modern struggle to understand the delineation between what is seen and what is to be believed. Lamont and Steinmeyer remind us, “We tend to believe what we are told and to see what we expect to see. We notice things that confirm our beliefs and interpret new information in line with our existing theories. As a result, we sometimes believe in things that are not really there.” Yep, that exactly relates to our daily bafflement of the internet, cable news, politicians, and media outlets.
I think what they want us to walk away with, is that in magic, we get that we are being deceived. We know that they will attempt to deceive us, and when the good magician succeeds, we are happily surprised, even if we have multiple thoughts of how the trick could have been achieved. With the world knocking at our screens and our brains for attention, we are being asked to trust. We find out we are being deceived only if we can step back enough to broaden our vision beyond our narrow daily vision, our confirmation bias, and our personal experiences. And that is hard. And it takes time. We should learn from the history of magic that our brains and our eyes are going to need to be questioned not when we are being entertained by magicians, but when we are dealing with the real tricksters out there. Enjoy the talented art of magic where you can be safely deceived to everyone’s enjoyment. Beware of how your mind and eyes may be deceiving you elsewhere. Those other folks, like a good magician, know how to narrow your focus, divert your attention, and make an elephant disappear right in front of you.
lexie9050's review against another edition
1.0
Got a free copy from a giveaway. Sadly, the book was not as interesting or entertaining as I thought it was going to be. I spent a large portion of the beginning of the book thinking that the author seemed like a student who had to write a paper for a subject that they didn't enjoy/choose to take and didn't work very hard on and just repeated the same stuff over and over in different ways just to reach the professor's required length.
alicihonest's review against another edition
3.0
Decently diverting, but not much new information if you know anything about magic history (not so secret) and too much new information if you know nothing about magic history (incohesive to the point of incoherent.) Both authors are great magic historians but just....read their other books instead.
omnibozo22's review against another edition
5.0
Well researched revisionist history of magicians. Mostly of interest to magicians who have read all the classic histories of magic.
stephang18's review against another edition
2.0
atrocious writing, which is a surprise because Steinmeyer is a decent writer. Lots of verbiage saying nothing.
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