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“Honestly, this is the only book on Harry Houdini most people will ever need. This tome covers his ancestry and birth in Hungary as Ehrich Weiss, his family's emigration to the United States, his growing fascination and obsession with magic, his long and phenomenally successful career as the greatest theatrical performer of the first half of the 20th century, as well dropping loud hints about a potential side career doing espionage work and how it evolved into an obsession with debunking spirit mediums and fortune tellers that he pursued with single-minded zeal right through to the last moments of his all-too-short life.
The research is strong, there are plenty of good illustrations and photographs scattered throughout the text, and the writing keeps things moving. It does, however, suffer from glossing over some aspects of Houdini's story. The implication that Houdini did some spy work for the United States is dropped repeatedly, with no actual follow up facts to corroborate it, except that gosh, he sure seemed to be able to get in to meet with a lot of police captains to check out their local jails. His obsession with aviation, and with being the first to fly an airplane in Australia, is just far enough outside of logic that it requires an explanation about why he sacrificed so much time, money and effort to try something so briefly, only to drop it and come home after a couple of successful flights. A hundred years ago, halfway around the world was a far longer trek than it is today. A bit more on why he did it would have been welcome.
These may sound like quibbles, but they do sometimes distract from the greater arc of the story, which is unfortunate. Harry Houdini was unquestionably a brilliant man, an intellectual genius, with founts of drive and resourcefulness beyond anything I've borne witness to in my own life, ever. And this book covers a ton of ground, detailing the tricks he used, the projects on which he focused, and the turbulent relationships he had with his wife, family, friends, and occasional indiscretions. But I didn't stay with this book to read about his potential affairs or his marital spats; I did so to find out more about about his magic and illusions, his spy work, and his research debunking the claims of the paranormal, because it is in those things -- the actual stuff of being the real superhero advertised in the title -- that this otherwise impressive biography falls short.”
