Signed book: Miracle Mongers and Their Methods: A Complete Expose. First edition. NY: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1920. Hardcover, 5.5 x 8.25, 240 pages. Signed nicely on the first free end page in black ink, "Good Luck, Houdini." Autographic condition: very good to fine, with light irregular toning and soiling to the signed page. Book condition: VG/None, with edgewear and a partially removed bookplate to front pastedown.
Following the death of his mother in 1913, Harry Houdini began to investigate spiritualism and 'soon became an all-out crusader against it. Early in 1924 he began lecturing throughout the United States on fraudulent mediums. In city after city he attended séances in disguise, exposing frauds on the spot and sometimes securing their arrest, aided by his personal squad of detectives. The raids brought him huge publicity as well as a million dollars in lawsuits.' In Miracle Mongers, Houdini—who was a collector of notebooks, manuscripts, and artifacts related to magic and illusion—divulges the 'modus operandi of fire-eaters, heat resisters, poison eaters, venomous reptile defiers, sword swallowers, human ostriches [and] strong men.'
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