Houdini The Elusive American Adam Begley

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Series:: Jewish Lives
Format:: Hardback
Publication date:: 12 May 2020
ISBN:: 9780300230796
Imprint:: Yale University Press
Dimensions:: 232 pages: 210 x 146 x 22mm
Illustrations:: 27 b-w illus.
Sales territories:: World

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From the prizewinning Jewish Lives series, an exuberant biography of the world’s greatest escape artist

In 1916, the war in Europe having prevented a tour abroad, Harry Houdini wrote a film treatment for a rollicking motion picture. Though the movie was never made, its title, “The Marvelous Adventures of Houdini: The Justly Celebrated Elusive American,” provides a succinct summary of the Master Mystifier’s life.

Born Erik Weisz in Budapest in 1874, Houdini grew up an impoverished Jewish immigrant in the Midwest and became world-famous thanks to talent, industry, and ferocious determination. He concealed as a matter of temperament and professional ethics the secrets of his sensational success. Nobody knows how Houdini performed some of his dazzling, death-defying tricks, and nobody knows, finally, why he felt compelled to punish and imprison himself over and over again. Tracking the restless Houdini’s wide-ranging exploits, acclaimed biographer Adam Begley tells the story of a mystifying man’s astonishing career.

About Jewish Lives:

Jewish Lives is a prizewinning series of interpretative biography designed to explore the many facets of Jewish identity. Individual volumes illuminate the imprint of Jewish figures upon literature, religion, philosophy, politics, cultural and economic life, and the arts and sciences. Subjects are paired with authors to elicit lively, deeply informed books that explore the range and depth of the Jewish experience from antiquity to the present.

In 2014, the Jewish Book Council named Jewish Lives the winner of its Jewish Book of the Year Award, the first series ever to receive this award.

More praise for Jewish Lives:

“Excellent.” – New York times

“Exemplary.” – Wall St. Journal

“Distinguished.” – New Yorker

“Superb.” – The Guardian

Adam Begley is the author of Updike and The Great Nadar. He was a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography, and for many years the books editor of the New York Observer.

"Vivid."—David Denby, New Yorker

“[This book] examines the secrets of Houdini’s success.”—Simon Yaffe, Jewish Telegraph

“Much has been written about the magician over the years but this book, part of a Jewish Lives series, delves not just into his tricks and star-studded life, but also probes his poor background and ferocious determination to succeed.”—Peter Gruner, Camden New Journal

“[I]n this fascinating and most entertaining book, Begley chooses to print the history, and it is amazing enough in itself without the need for adding any myths or legends. Read it and be amazed.”—John Rimmer, Magonia Review of Books

“Witty, intelligent, and sprightly, Adam Begley’s Houdini tells a story that is not only central to the American experience, but strangely pertinent to the fakery, fraudulence, and self-promotion dominating our news waves at present.”—Wendy Lesser, author of Jerome Robbins: A Life in Dance