"The Art of Deception"

[Guest]

I am very intersted in any information pertaining to, "The Art of Deception" by Chuch Romano. If anyone has any info it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

[Guest]

Chuck Romano's 1997 book is subtitled "The Affinity between Conjuring and Art." I feel the subtitle is a bit misleading, as it seems to imply some kind of philosophical discussion, which is not the subject of the book. A more prosaic, but more accurate description is "Profiles of Conjuring's most influential illustrators." The book chronicles the work of Tarbell, Hahne, Rigney, Martineau, Onosaka, Lorraine, Kaufman and many others whose talents have helped communicate magic visually. It begins with information on older images depicting the art, then lithography. The book is a 407 page hardback with a beautiful dustjacket. Limited to 500 copies signed and numbered by the author, it went out of print within about a year of publication, though a few dealers, ourselves (H & R Magic Books) included, still have a few copies in stock (we stocked up when the publisher told us it was going out of print!). Our copies are still at the published price of $110. Mention the Genii Forum and we'll pay domestic media mail or UPS ground shipping on this... Let me know if you need further information.
www.magicbookshop.com

[Guest]

Thanks for the info. Why did it go out of print so early? Actually I have a copy that my aunt had lying around. She said I could have it. She got it from here work place. Inside the cover it reads "review copy". Was this printed before the first run? It is a wonderful book and I will treasure it.
Thanks again.

[Guest]

"Review copies" are usually unnumbered copies (so there would have been 500 signed and numbered copies plus an unspecified number of "review" copies). Going out of print in a year is not unusual for such a limited print run.