Magic Tricks

WARNING: if all you are looking for is a good, dollar-change, this book is way too much for you. Don't buy this book and just follow these four steps:
1) decide on the effect you want
2) decide if you want to go with a gimmick or gimmickless
3) decide if you want to go with one that uses a thumbtip or one that lets your thumb go commando
4) buy said effect--there are plenty of acceptable variations you can buy on Penguin magic and elsewhere--and be done with it.

HOWEVER, for magicians who are truly dollar-change obsessed, Switch, by John Lovick, is about as perfect a book as you could buy.

Full disclosure: when I bought Switch, I thought I was simply interested in looking into a few good dollar bill switch tricks. When this nearly encyclopedic, 345 page, elegant, large format, coffee-table-worthy book, expertly printed on heavy acid-free paper arrived, I was a bit in shock. This was not just a book with a few different variations of the $100 bill switch. This was the $100 bill switch bible.

That said, after digging in, I was absolutely blown away!

John Lovick has pulled out the stops and produced a book that thoroughly covers all the bases. Part I recounts the history and theory of the bill change. Part II is a thorough look at basic thumbtip handlings (7 in all), complete with a review of appropriate thumbtip techniques, utility moves, and finesses. Part III gives you three different, basic tipless variations (3) with its own section on utility moves, techniques, and finesses. Part IV gives you numerous handlings and methods including palm up handlings, switch methods, and other miscellaneous methods. And if all that were not enough Part V gives you numerous, successful routines used by magicians you know and love and some great stuff from lesser known mages who you may be meeting for the first time. Rounding things out, in Part VI you will get additional ideas, including variations on the bill change, vanishes, and non-bill ideas using slips of paper that change places or seemingly morph. Part VII is the coda of this magnum opus, with interesting facts about money, U.S. laws about defacing, reproducing, and counterfeiting currency (caveat emptor), and a final section which is a rundown of commercially available stuff that either didn't make the book or couldn't be included for some reason and important books, routines, and gimmicks not found elsewhere in the book.

If you are thinking that that's a lot of book to devote to the lowly bill change, than you are right. It's pretty much everything about the bill change that was available up to 2006 when the book was published. There may be some strays that eluded Lovick, but I can't imagine there were many. There are certainly innovations that may have come up since 2006, but there's more than enough material here to ponder. And if you can't find a bill change that suits you after going through 345 pages of them, you need to find another hobby...

The breadth is pretty amazing. We're talking everything from the classic bill change, to torn and restored bills, to transformations, impossible location routines, mis-made bill routines, multiple switches. With and without thumbtips and gimmicks and a lot of incredible advice along the way.

Illustrations are simple, line drawings but incredibly clear and have a very cool vintage quality to them. There are far more ways to fold a bill than I could have imagined and far more presentations than I ever could have guessed. I'm not by any means an advanced magician--this is a hobby I've picked up over the past year--but my inner technique nerd has been unmasked and I was riveted to this book cover to cover.

Those who are not interested in such an in depth going over of the bill switch are going to wonder why the heck anyone would spend so much time on this kind of stuff. Again, if you're just looking to do a simple, bill change effect, go out, purchase it, and be done. If you are interested in shake changing wads of $1s to $100s, this is not your book either. It really is focused on changing a single bill, although it does include some routines to change a single bill multiple times. The large format of the book can be a bit cumbersome, but it does serve a purpose, allowing for larger, clearer illustrations. It's also a bit of a shame that this beautiful book is so suitable for the coffee table, as you generally don't want your guests poring over magic books and discovering your secrets.

Handsome Jack has given us a handsome book that is a real winner for those magic geeks among us who like to dive deep into the history, philosophy, and subtle variations of a given effect. Lots of wow here. Recommended.