Magic Tricks

My first card book was "Scarne on Card Tricks" and I loved the idea of doing amazing card magic without difficult sleight of hand so you could concentrate on performance rather than technique. "Destination Zero" is a wonderful book using the same idea: great magic doesn't have to be difficult. Inside there are a lot of great tricks, some actually routined together by John, and none of which require hours of knuckle-busting.

Some do require a little setup ahead of time, while many do not. He even explains on a couple of them how to set up right in front of the spectator as innocently as you could imagine. He teaches a great false cut and a good false shuffle (neither of which is difficult, but both of which look real). The only shortcoming I could find is that many of the tricks require a table or some surface to perform on as you lay the cards out, so it will take some creativity to adapt them to walkaround situations if you want to use them.

Truthfully, if you really want to add something spectacular to your "no sleights" performance repertoire that won't require you to do some mathematical calculations or count out 21 cards, this book has a lot to offer.