“Wonders, Wonders, Wonders,” “Seeming Impossibilities,” “Masters of the Mysterious” and “Twentieth-Century Sorcerers,” in a heavily illustrated history of stage trickery from the pharaohs to television. A brief stop on the Continent for some fire-resisting: “The king of Eighteenth-Century fire eaters at the British fairs was Robert Powell. He ate hot coals ‘as natural as bread,’ licked red-hot tobacco pipes—aflame with brimstone—with his bare tongue, and cooked a cut of mutton using his mouth, filled with red-hot charcoal, as an oven. A spectator pumped a bellows to keep the coals blazing under his tongue… Chabert, the French ‘Incombustible Phenomenon,’ was later to carry the fiery arts to new extremes… With several steaks in hand, he boldly entered a blazing oven. Singing merrily in the inferno, he cooked the steaks and handed them out to be eaten. Then he himself emerged, smiling broadly, with not so much as a single singed hair.” GR

Publisher: Dover
Paperback: 224 pages
Illustrated

“Do you remember seeing or being told about the vast diorama of Democracity representing the theme of the Fair in 1939, ‘Building the World of Tomorrow’; GM’s Futurama ride; the world’s largest mirrored ceiling; 3-D movies; Elektro, a robot seven feet tall; the Town of Tomorrow; Toyland; the Parachute Jump; Billy Rose’s Aquacade?” The fairgrounds were a fantasy of Art Deco and Bauhaus confections, all centered around the pseudo-symbolic Trylon (700 feet tall) and Perisphere (200 feet wide). The pavilions were designed by Raymond Loewy and Norman Bel Geddes, among others, and filled with the most modern art by the likes of Dali, Noguchi, and Calder. Johnny Weissmuller showed up to shake your hand, and Sally Rand did her famous fan dance. This was the world of tomorrow! Then came World War II… GR

Publisher: Dover
Paperback: 152 pages
Illustrated

Spanning clinical laboratory analysis and standard music theory, this valuable introduction written in 1938 helped in the establishment of pyschoacoustics and led to a greater study and understanding of how our sensory capacities distinguish between pitch and frequency, tone and dynamics, and how our conscious perception of sound affects musical aesthetics. BW

Publisher: Dover
Paperback: 408 pages
Illustrated

Don’t watch that—watch this! Escaping from bank vaults, popping out of jails, walking through brick walls, making elephants vanish, escaping from crates underwater and writhing free of straitjackets are the legendary illusions of Harry Houdini (alias Ehrich Weiss). “So fantastic were his tricks that many thought him to be supernatural, a mystic, and an amazing spiritualist.” But Houdini was just another dapper con-man, adept at swallowing keys and sliding open invisible panels. “Exposing his closely kept professional secrets, and revealing in general terms the whole art of stage magic, this book is now considered a classic study of Houdini’s strange deceptions.” Plus how to accomplish dozens of other famous magic tricks and stage illusions. First published in 1931. GR

Publisher: Dover
Paperback: 279 pages
Illustrated

“Presents a collection of German cautionary tales, featuring such characters as Shock-Headed Peter, Cruel Frederick, Little Suck-a-Thumb, and the Inky Boys. Includes a brief biography of the author.”

Publisher: Dover
Paperback: 31 pages
Illustrated

George Bernard Shaw wrote The Perfect Wagnerite in 1898 and continued to revise it until 1923. With intelligence and ample doses of wit, Shaw freely interprets The Ring through his strongly socialist political filter. JAT

Publisher: Dover
Paperback: 136 pages

Facsimile edition of the handwritten manuscript the author gave to his friend’s daughter, young Alice Liddle, in 1864, complete with original illustrations and an oval portrait of Alice glued to the last page. Revised and expanded with new illustrations, this early adventure was reproduced using a zinc-block photo process (called photo-zincography), and became the Alice in Wonderland tale we are familiar with today. GR

Publisher: Dover
Paperback: 128 pages
Illustrated

Young Doré (1832-1883), “the precocious genius from Strasbourg, who had been drawing practically from infancy,” was inspired by Rabelais’ two social satires, Gargantua and Pantagruel, to produce these comic illustrations. The woodblock prints show Doré’s deft, humorous hand at work, playing light against dark for both dramatic depth and theatrical effect. Gargantua is the story of a giant man, who can be seen here spearing a human on his dinner fork (strictly a Doré touch—it’s not in the story). GR

Publisher: Dover
Paperback: 153 pages
Illustrated

Grosz’s masterwork depicting Germany between wars through grotesque cabaret visions and images of frightening hedonism.

Publisher: Dover
Paperback: 88 pages
Illustrated

“One of the supreme artists of the 18th and 19th centuries, Goya produced an enormous body of paintings, drawings and engravings. His drawings especially demonstrate the vast range of the artist’s subject matter and technique, and include all of Goya’s best-known thematic material: portraits, scenes of fantasy and horror, bullfighting, witchcraft, the sorrows of war, social satire, prisons and executions, liberalism and anticlericalism.”

Publisher: Dover
Paperback: 48 pages
Illustrated