(FORTUNE Magazine) – S.W. Erdnase was the pseudonym of Milton Franklin Andrews, a card cheat, confidence man, and murderer. He shot himself and his girlfriend in 1905 in San Francisco when police busted into his apartment to arrest him for the murder of a previous girlfriend. Well, not every great poet was a saint either. Erdnase published The Expert at the Card Table himself in 1902, although it seems to have benefited from the hand of a talented editor. It remains today the single great treatise on card manipulation. But the author's knowing, even proud, amorality inhabits every line and is as impressive and absorbing as the sleights themselves.

This is another in Dover's series of excellent reprints of books about magic, which can be read for pleasure even if you have no interest in performing tricks. Two other particular favorites are The Secrets of Houdini, whose subject is obvious, by J.C. Cannell, and Magic, edited by Albert A. Hopkins, a wonderful compendium of elaborate stage illusions, trick photography, and the temple magic of ancient Greek religion.

--Gregory Curtis