Random I-Tunes Song of The Moment: I Hope You Find It by Miley Cyrus

If/when you get this book, I'm not sure what you'll be looking for, but I Hope You Find It (thank you Miley Cyrus). It's kind of a strange book. Is it well written? Well it's hard to say . . . Did it accomplish the purpose it set out to accomplish? Well it's hard to say . . .

Essentially this book is broken into two parts. The first part is a reproduction of 10 articles written for the PEA's Monthly magazine, Vibrations. These ten articles where written by Joseph Atmore and were entitled "Dunninger Knows." They were written in 2004 from the perspective of Dunninger (who died in 1975) as if he were still alive and commenting on the current state of mentalism.

To me this was the highlight of the book. They were funny, clever, witty, and from what little I know about Dunninger, very accurate as to how he might have responded were he to have written them himself. Unfortunately, the 40ish pages that this section covered is only about 10% of the book. The other 90% was nowhere near as interesting to me, but I'll let you be the judge.

The other 90% and the second of the two parts that make up the book is essentially a copy and paste of the majority of the television transcripts of Dunninger's regular shows (i.e., The Bigelow Show, The Dunninger Show and The Amazing Dunninger). My understanding is that every script included in the book makes up the entire collection of scripts that have been recovered/uncovered/etc. After each copy of the transcript, there are commentaries by Joseph Atmore, Banachek, Max Maven, Richard Osterlind, and several other well known names in the industry.

Much of their commentary was speculation at how he might have accomplished his Brain Busters. Sprinkled throughout are various historical notes and quasi-biographical pieces of information. But for the most part, the next 350 ish pages, you're reading stuff like this (taken from page 151 of the book):

The Bigelow Show, November 9, 1949

Guests: Gene Tunney and Barney Ross.

SEYMOUR INTRODUCED GENE TUNNEY AND BARNEY ROSS AND INTERVIEWS THEM BRIEFLY. THEY EXPLAIN THAT THEY HAVE A MENTAL EXPERIMENT TO PRESENT TO DUNNINGER.

SEYMOUR INTRODUCES DUNNINGER WHO COMES ON STAGE.

APPLAUSE.

TUNNY AND ROSS EXPLAIN THEIR EXPERIMENT TO DUNNINGER. THEY WILL CONCENTRATE ON A PARTICULAR TELEPHONE NUMBER. THEY WANT TO SEE IF HE CAN MENTALLY RECEIVE THIS NUMBER, DIAL IT, AND THEN READ THE MIND OF THE PERSON ON THE OTHER END WHO ANSWERS. DUNNINGER AGREES.

. . . [blah . . . blah . . . blah . . . ]

Forgive me, but his is not exactly a page turner. Some of the commentary between the scripts - they really were written in ALL CAPS LIKE THAT - was a bit interesting. It was kind of interesting to hear speculations on possible methods, but overall, you don't really get to know much about Dunninger. This is not really a biography (though it never claims to be). You essentially are just purchasing nearly 90 (yes I counted) copies of television transcripts.

You get that, plus the somewhat interesting commentary I mentioned, and the 10% "Dunninger Knows" articles I mentioned earlier (best part of the book).

Bottom line: unless you're a magic collector, use your 70 bucks to fill up the tank in your car and buy a gallon of milk . . . you'll get more use out of that. If you are a collector of magic history, I would argue that this is possibly a must have for your collection. It's got a fair amount of history about Dunninger's shows in the form of a timeline and a boat load of scripts . . . but very little about the man.

So back to my opening statements/questions: Is it well written? Well it's hard to say . . . because it's 90% cut and paste of TV transcripts, so there's not much writing to judge. I did find it a bit humorous that one of the "Dunninger Knows" articles was a rant about quality of print and how everyone who published stuff made too many mistakes in their publications. Yet, Dunninger (played by Joseph Atmore) boasted, none of his (Dunninger's) published works had any grammar, punctuation, syntax or other errors. What I found funny was the fact that there were many such errors in the text to come in the book.

Did the book accomplish what it set out to accomplish? Well it's hard to say . . . because the author never really clarifies what that goal is.

Final Verdict:
2 stars with a Stone Status of grubble (a whole bunch of rubble with a teeny bit of gem)