An informal history of sensational, scientific, silly, satisfying, and startling attractions based on seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth-century broadsides from Ricky Jay's extraordinary collection.

One of the New York Times's "Notable Books" and a Los Angeles Times "Best Book of the Year": Ricky Jay's brilliant excursion into the history of bizarre entertainments. Ingesters of stones, stoats, and swords have long compelled my attention. Signor Hervio Nano, the fantastic homunculus, defied conventional taxonomy. The well-trained flea has shown sufficient rationality to drive a chariot, impersonate Napoleon, or reenact the siege of Antwerp. Note the enduring popularity of severing...

Ricky Jay is one of the world's great sleight-of-hand artists. He is also a most unusual and talented scholar, specializing in the bizarre, exotic, and fantastic side of the human species. The youngest magician to have appeared on television, Jay has become well known for his astonishing stage show as well as for his cameos in such movies as Glengarry Glen Ross and, most recently, Boogie Nights.

Jay's unparalleled collection of books, posters, photographs, programs, broadsides, and, most important,...

The author of the critically acclaimed Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women, a nationally known sleight-of-hand expert, movie actor and magician extraor dinaire, presents a stylish parody of self-defense books that demonstrates how ordinary playing cards can be used as a means of protection. Photos.