Picking up after the card games stop and before the real magic begins, Joshua Jay's Amazing Book of Cards fills the void between books about card games and magic manuals. Joshua's book combines friendly, concise text and full-color photos; the book comes with a full-length DVD that teaches the lessons and shows the subtleties of performance.
Joshua Jay's Amazing Book of Cards teaches card players and people of all ages more than 50 impressive tricks and flourishes to do with a single deck of cards. The simple tricks take moments to learn, Joshua says.
Ever wonder how magicians can guess which card you picked? The answer is in Joshua's book www.joshuajay.com -- with lessons on how to "force" and how to know which card of a small selection was chosen using "pointer" cards. If you'd rather get a little artsy with your deck, Joshua shows how to make an origami Leap Frog, how to host a fortune telling session or how to cut a hole in a card big enough for someone to step through. You can even find out how to do "Presto Prediction" and perform the impossible task of knowing someone's choice before he or she even makes it.
You can also learn:
- High-speed card throwing
- Card games you cannot lose
- How to whip out flourishes and fans faster than a gunslinger on the draw
- Exotic shuffles that will put you at the top of the game before it starts
- Sleight of hand tricks to wow the most skeptical crowd
- How to memorize a deck in less than 10 seconds
For more information, visit www.joshuajay.com.
About Joshua Jay
Joshua Jay was crowned champion at the World Magic Seminar in 1998, when he was still a teenager. He's performed and lectured in over 50 countries, has headlined at the prestigious Magic Castle in Hollywood, and writes a monthly column in Magic, the world's largest circulated magazine for magicians. .
The twenty-eight-year-old New Yorker, Joshua has been called magic's Renaissance man by Magic Magazine: he is a performer, lecturer, author, and photographer of all things mysterious.
He performs close-up magic by borrowing ordinary objects, causing them to twist, bend, appear, and vanish at will. Coins, bottles, and borrowed hundred-dollar bills all become part of his performance. But his passion is cards. "I'm up to two packs a day," he says. But they are not your uncle's card tricks. His skill has earned him an international reputation.
Last year, he wrote a best-selling magic book, Magic: The Complete Course; it was published in five languages and now it is in its fourth printing. His fine-art photography has been exhibited in several shows, including the Culture Museum in Linz, Austria.
He became intrigued by magic when he was a child. His dad, a magic enthusiast showed him a card trick, and after hours of experimenting in his room, Joshua figured it out. "I always tell people I didn't find magic. Magic found me," Joshua says.
