Performing Dark Arts
A Cultural History of Conjuring
Distributed for Intellect Ltd
“If you want to learn about the one trick that all good conjurers have up their sleeve, the oldest in the book—here it is, rehearsed across the centuries. It is to make sure that whichever cup the audience looks under—mere chicanery or actual sorcery—the ball is not there.”
“This is an erudite book which wears its scholarship lightly and is a pleasure to read. Complex theoretical frameworks are introduced in ways that will make them accessible to the general reader, and the book's argument opens up new implications and applications for the study of magic as performance. . . . I was genuinely surprised and delighted with many of Mangan's observations.”
“Conjurors as performers have always had a special niche in exploiting the marvelous or the uncanny and trading upon our hope or fantasy that some real magic may be at work. Mangan’s delightful book shows that they will always be able to do so.”
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