I absolutely love Houdini; he was the reason I became fascinated with magic. This book does a wonderful job of examining new material and new stories about Houdini. Some chapters read like a blur and others seem long winded and tiring. The authors attempt to show Houdini's secret life as a "special agent." However, they do not support their claims enough. At times I think this book loses its focus and becomes like any other biography. If you are interested in Houdini and looking for something different, this is the book. ( )

Well written biography of fascinating character. Sometimes goes into unnecessary detail, but otherwise very good. ( )

Reviewed July 2007

Where to start? Firstly I love the short breaks in the chapters this allows me to read faster and with more interest. I must say that this book seems overwhelmingly well researched. Lots of interesting pictures. The difference with this bio from other works is that the authors claim Houdini worked for the Secret Service many times throughout his career. The evidence they give seems to support this theory. Relying on primary sources they are able to recount conversations that might have happened, this only makes the story more readable. Houdini is an amazing man - truly what the authors call America's First Superhero. Houdini guarded his reputation carefully which might be why his name is in the dictionary today. The chapters I was most interested in were the later ones where Houdini takes on the spiritualists. The story of Houdini and Conan Doyle has already been recounted in "Final Seance" which I read years ago. There seems to be no conflict between these two books. Doyle saw Houdini as a genuine medium who would not admit it, "Doyle and the true believers despised him for standing in the way of the New Revelation." (p.521) Very religious Houdini badly wanted to believe, he wanted to contact his mother but found only frauds. "Would the God that created the most breathtaking mountain ranges...stoop to manifest something as vile and bse as ectoplasm?" (p. 496) One ex medium supposedly told Houdini about her change of heart, "I really believed in Spiritualism all the time I was practicing it...but I thought I was justified in helping the spirits out...through tricery I could get more converts...to a good and beautiful religion." (p. 490) Houdini exposed hundreds (?) of mediums waging war on them. He had plants inside most spiritulist circles and eposed their tricks during his performances. His most famous nemisis is Margary from Boston. Houdini eposed her on stage as well, one night he showed a photograph of Walker as a young man, her spirit guide and also her brother and then he showed a photograph of Walter crushed by a train. The saddest part of the whole book was the treachery by his beloved wife Bess.
16-2007 ( )

This book was an adventure in itself, as grueling, but also as entertaining and mystifying as the great Houdini himself must have been on stage. If only one word could be said, that word would be "Thorough". Kalush and Sloman say in their preface that they created, as best they could, a day-by-day time line of Houdini's life, and it is clear that they did exactly that. Almost every gig the magician every played is at least mentioned, if not detailed in this tome, making it certainly one of the most complete biographies ever written. At times, the sheer amount of information and number of names can be overwhelming, but they wisely include many anecdotes of the challenges and confrontations that Houdini made along the way to spice up the story a bit. Unfortunately, towards the end, things get a bit stroppy, with scenes and information being randomly shoved into the middle of chapters, having no-where else logical to put them.

The authors clearly respect Houdini, but I do not think that compromised their representation of him. For all of the wonder and amazing feats they describe, they also make it clear that he could have a vengefully temper, near superhuman stubbornness, and moments of incredible hypocrisy. It seems that one of the main arguments against this book is that Kalush and Sloman make some almost far fetched hypothesizes, including that Houdini served as a spy for both American and British intelligence in tours through Europe. I'm as sceptical as the next guy, but truth be told, it could almost be true. They do not try to make up evidence, they just find some rather telling coincidences and communications that could point to Harry having his hands in some pretty heavy stuff. Luckily, at least to my opinion, that did not hijack the book, but indeed increased some of the mystery and made me as the reader even more engrossed. There are a few more incidents they describe which have very little backup besides personal accounts told long after Houdini's death, but again, the added layers may enhance the story as opposed to disrupt it. Only later in the book do things seem to get a little over the top, but they cite sources in there online footnotes that seem reliable, and frankly, it is almost too outrageous to be invented.

By far, the only frustrating part about this book is that they only reveal the methods that Houdini used if the man reveled them himself in his lifetime. Every other trick, from the water-cell to some of his phony 'mind-reading' is left as a mystery. The authors often don't even acknowledge that we don't know what he did, they just take it as unknowable and move along. I suppose that that is just the nature of the magician, is it not?

All in all, this was a very engrossing and entertaining read, even if it sometimes got a little outlandish and a little full of minutiae. In many ways, it also forced me to ask more questions than it actually answered, but to that, we have to look at the subject. The true nature of Harry Houdini has been long lost. No one now alive was ever close to him, and most of the queries we have will never be answered. In a way, his entire life was one of his tricks: stunning and miraculous, but all of the solutions took place behind a curtain. We will never know if he was a spy, if he was murdered, if he really did have some sort of power beyond mortal ken (though he always denied it). These things and more will remain mysteries, and they rightly should do just that. Even in life, Houdini was more Myth than Man, and I do not think he would want it any other way. ( )

DESPITE his name, his looks and his slightly off-putting devotion to “Mama”, Harry Houdini was not Italian, but Jewish. The Hungarian-born Erik Weiss emigrated to America aged four with his mother Cecilia, father Rabbi Mayer and five siblings.

Boastful, brash and brilliant, the pint-sized extrovert disproved the old adage that “empty vessels make the most noise” — he was certainly noisy but, as Houdini might have said, he always “delivered da goods”.

At nearly 600 pages, The Secret Life of Houdini will answer any questions you might have had about this legendary showman as well as a host of other questions you couldn’t be bothered to ask.

For anyone with an interest in society and spiritualism, or magic and theatre, or even early publicity gimmicks, I have no hesitation in recommending you wait for The Reader’s Digest condensed version of this book and buy it.

After about 30 pages, the phrase “I’ll wait for the movie” became increasingly attractive. The book is 300 pages too long and has a tendency to ramble incoherently at times.

However, hidden beneath often tedious and unnecessary verbiage is an exciting and fascinating tale just needing a ruthless editor to turn it into a bestseller.

After an early youth of middle-class comfort and respectability, Houdini ’s family was plunged into poverty when his father lost his position as a rabbi. Education became a luxury they could no longer afford and young Erik went out to work.

He was enterprising and his fascination with conjuring started when he was still a child.

Long before he became a professional magician, he was honing the athletic and acrobatic skills which would prove so important to his career.

Houdini met Bess, daughter of devout and superstitious German Catholics, and within a month they were married and — against the odds — stayed married.

Despite his lack of formal education, Houdini was a clever man with an insatiable curiosity, a keen sense of justice and a physical rectitude — he neither drank nor smoked, ate moderately and exercised obsessively.

His wife Bess was another story: magician, spy, illusionist, show man, inventor, debunker, author, athlete and adventurer he was, the sceptic might consider Houdini ’s greatest achievement was remaining married to Bess for nearly 40 years. Ignorant, superstitious and intolerant, she was not only a drug addict but also an alcoholic and a closet spiritualist; Houdini waged and financed a personal campaign to expose this “religion” as fraudulent.

Houdini ’s initial affinity, and then his enmity, with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, his marriage and his mistress, his family and his friends, his scepticism and his spirituality and, most importantly, his personal faith and professional fakery — it’s all here. Together with rather too much more. ( )