The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin

At nineteen, Harry Houdini read Robert-Houdin's memoirs and chose his life's path. Two decades later, he wrote this book to dismantle the very man who made him. What follows is part prosecution, part autopsy of a hero worship gone wrong. Houdini combed through forgotten French periodicals, dusty magician biographies, and obscure manuscripts to prove that the father of modern magic borrowed liberally from predecessors who received no credit. But this is more than a takedown. It's an alternative history of conjuring, resurrecting the forgotten inventors and performers whom Robert-Houdin erased from the narrative. Houdini writes with anger, yet underneath the polemic lies genuine grief. This is a magician working through the death of an illusion, his own this time. The book also plant seeds: Houdini's investigation into spiritualism and fraud detection, themes he would explore more fully in later works.