$12(2 customer ratings) ★★★★★
New Era Card Tricks is the masterpiece of Roterberg's publishing efforts. Scholars are pretty sure that the elusive Erdnase must have known and read this book. It is still today an extremely good and important work on cards. It is a book any serious card man should read. This is to a large part the foundation on which a lot of the later card work has been built. A good part of this book is essentially a translation of the German work Der Moderne Kartenkünstler by Friedrich W. Conradi. Richard Hatch wrote a wonderful introduction that by itself is worth reading. He starts:
August Roterberg is chiefly remembered today as a pioneering early twentieth century American magic dealer and as the author of the books featured here in digital form. Magic collectors seek out his palming coins, catalogs, apparatus, ephemera and variant copies of his books. But perhaps Roterberg’s more significant legacy is that he inaugurated the modern age of magic publishing, for his books are the first substantial ones on conjuring in English written expressly for magicians. Those conjuring books that preceded Roterberg were either exposures rather than teaching texts or were - like the excellent works by Robert-Houdin, Hoffmann and Sachs - issued by mainstream publishers targeting a general (and often juvenile) audience. Roterberg’s books were published by a magic dealer specifically for sale in magical depots, rather than for wide distribution to the general public. When one considers that most serious magic books today are issued by specialty publishers to be distributed primarily through magic dealers, one recognizes in Roterberg the source of this publishing model in the English speaking marketplace....
Table of Contents
SLEIGHTS.
- The Double Handed Pass
- The Herrmann Pass
- The Charlier Pass
- The Force
- Changes
- The Top Change
- The Bottom Change
- The New Top Change
- The Mexican Turn Over
- The Excelsior Change
- The Color Change
- First Method
- Second Method
- Third Method
- Fourth Method
- The Card Palm
- The Regular Palm
- The Buatier Palm
- The Back Hand Palm
- New Thought Card Sleights
- First Method
- Second Method
- Third Method
- The New Glimpse
- First Method
- Second Method
- Third Method
- The Bridge
- The Prearranged Pack
- The Glide
- The Revolution
- False Shuffles
- The Cut
- Shuffling the Entire Pack
- For One Card
TRICKS WITH CARDS.
- Ne Plus Ultra
- First Method
- Second Method
- Penetration of Matter
- First Method
- Second Method
- Magic Versus Mnemonics
- The Card Receptacle
- The Appearance of Desired Cards
- The Mysterious Production
- The Improved Mysterious Production
- The Improved Cards Read Behind the Back
- The Hypnotised Card
- The Queen of the Air
- The Lost Found
- The Card Caught on the Plate
- The Lantern of Diogenes
- Extraordinary Restoration
- Apparent Second Sight
- The Attached Card
- Cards Shot Against a Hat
- War in Peace
- The New Card Table
- Thought Reading Extraordinary
- A Mysterious Change
- The Card and Handkerchief
- The Itinerant Card
- The Terpsichorean Card
- The Card in the Pocket
- The Spectator as Conjurer
- Gravity Defied
- The Demon Envelope
- The Ubiquitous Card
- Four Cards Caught at the Fingertips
- The Card, Ribbon and Envelope
- Facilis Descensus Averno
- The Obedient Card
- The Card Appearing on the Bottle
- First Method
- Second Method
- The Card on the Table Edge
- The Mysteries of the Zodiac
- The Cards, Coins and Glass
- First Method
- Second Method
- Third Method
- The Halved Card
- The Phoenix
- The Lost Ace
- Thought Foretold
- The Pierced Card
- The Card Box
- The Mechanical Card Box
- The Brass Card Box
- The New Brass Card Box
- The Vanishing of Thought Cards
- X Rays
- First Method
- Second Method
- The Balanced Card
- The Lightning Change
- The Card Servante
- Rapid Transit
- The Cards and the Orange Tree
- Card, Ring and Ribbon
- The Conjurer's Prediction
- Handkerchief and Card
- Marvellous Coincidence
- Grand Card Maneuvre
- The New General Card
- The Small Card Frame
- First Method
- Second Method
- Grande Clairvoyance Mysterieuse
- First Method
- Second Method
- Third Method
- The Bridge of Cards
- The Cards and Mirror
- The Spirit Envelope
- The Divination of Thought
- Mnemonics Applied to Cards
- The Acrobatic Cards
- Singular Transposition
- First Method
- Second Method
- Vice Versa
- A Hypnotic Experiment
- The Mysterious Hat
- Mystic Divination
- Predestination
- The Flying and Obedient Card
- The New Multiplication of Cards
- Card and Egg Balance
- The Fountain of Cards
- The New Rising Cards from the Hand
- Second Method
- The Cards Rising Through the Air
- The Excelsior Rising Cards
- The Rising Cards and Tumbler
- A Comedy of Errors
- First Method
- Second Method
- Third Method
- The Hand of Cagliostro
PREPARED AND MECHANICAL CARDS.
- The Changing Card
- The Unique Changing Card
- The Diminishing Card
- The Latest Diminishing Card
- The Changing and Diminishing Card
- The Changing and Enlarging Card
- New Quadruple Changing Card
- The Card and Rose
- The Floral Card
- The Penetrative Card
- The Torn Corner Card
- The Improved Torn Corner Card
- The Flap Card
- The Nonpareil Changing Card
- Improved Nonpareil Changing Card
- The Bottle Card
- The Conjurer as Marksman
- Moving Pip Card
- A Mysterious Transformation
- The New Ink Card
- The Envelope Card
- The Vanishing Pips
- The Turning Card
- The Reunited Card
- The Card and Broken Mirror
- The Coin Card
- Eclipsed Pack of Cards
- The Diminishing Cards
- First Method
- Second Method
- Third Method
- Fourth Method
1st edition, 1897, Roterberg, London; 279 pages.
word count: 67652 which is equivalent to 270 standard pages of text