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THE MAGICIAN AND THE CARDSHARP

Name: THE MAGICIAN AND THE CARDSHARP
Author: Karl Johnson
ISBN: 0-8050-7406-6

THE SEARCH FOR AMERICA’S GREATEST SLEIGHT-OF-HAND ARTIST

by Karl Johnson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 10, 2005

Like the ivory-billed woodpecker, the center deal may be alive and well, comfortably living in secrecy. Johnson’s tribute...

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Dealing cards from the center of the deck, a trick only the most exquisite dealers can manage, forms the heart of journalist Johnson’s story of a card artist and crooked gambler.

Dai Vernon was a magician, a fine hand at string and colored silks, cups and balls and coins, but he will be remembered for his finesse at cards, his astonishing, natural and casual grace. He was not a gambler, though, and spent much of his life working as a cutter of silhouettes, a pleasant art form affordable even in the Depression era. With Wichita for a hometown, the Vernon that Johnson reveals became a true obsessive: He would spend hours, weeks, years refining his magic technique—he never went in for smoke, mirrors and wires, preferring the sleight-of-the-unadorned-hand along with any psychological subtleties he might work on his mark. Allen Kennedy, on the other hand, was pure cardsharp and shadows: quiet, unassuming and in complete control of the game, stacking and peeking and dealing from the bottom. And Kennedy could deal from the center of the deck, something Vernon had only heard rumors of. Johnson follows Vernon as he manages to track Kennedy down outside Kansas City to learn the trick of the center draw (it requires doing finger exercises practiced by pianists; Johnson is good at explaining the mechanics). It almost seems that Vernon and Kennedy alone had the requisite touch for the center deal, until Johnson notes a tantalizing story. In 1982, a casino surveillance expert was patrolling the catwalks when he witnessed for the first time a sharp dealing from the center. He didn’t turn the man in—the stakes simply weren’t that high—but observed the rarity from afar and with utter admiration.

Like the ivory-billed woodpecker, the center deal may be alive and well, comfortably living in secrecy. Johnson’s tribute will make you hope so.

Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2005

ISBN: 0-8050-7406-6

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Henry Holt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2005

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)