Book Review: 'The Last Greatest Magician in the World' by Jim Steinmeyer

Jim Steinmeyer’s thorough, loving biography of magician Howard Thurston, who in the early part of the Twentieth Century boasted the most lavish traveling magic show in the United States, is subtitled Howard Thurson Versus Houdini and the Battles of the American Wizards. This is puzzling, since when it comes to Thurston and Houdini, as far as Steinmeyer is concerned, Thurston won the battle by default.

Almost no one remembers Howard Thurston’s name today, but in the glory days of vaudeville he was a household name. The modern image we have of the classical magician - a distinguished man with a captivating voice, gloved hands and rehearsed mystery by the ton, sawing women in half and producing rabbits from the ether – is derived not from Houdini, who was in his day largely known merely as an escape artist, but from Thurston.

The Last Greatest Magician in the World is an attempt to simultaneously explain and justify Thurston’s place at the pinnacle of the great magicians. It’s a broad, ambitious work, encompassing not only Thurston’s professional life, but also the often complex politics of dealing with other magicians (including Houdini), the origins of many of his most famous illusions (Many of them, as it turns out, were not entirely of his own design.), his marriages, his almost constant financial troubles and, most profoundly, the lifelong quest for perfection he pursued from his very first card tricks to his final sad shows.

Steinmeyer’s enthusiasm for his subject matter is infectious. Howard Thurston’s life was often reliably exciting, particularly the sections of his boyhood spent riding the rails, hobo style, throughout the United States. But other portions were simply long slogs on the road with a traveling magic show that often had little money. Here Steinmeyer transcends the role of chronicler and becomes a storyteller, crafting moving passages from firsthand accounts of Thurston’s skill as a performer, his way with children, his curious eccentricities and his often contentious relationship with his peers.

At times, though, it feels the book could be shorter. The first and last chapters of The Last Greatest Magician in the World say almost everything a mildly interested person could hope to know about Thurston, and even almost fully explain his important to the history of magic. What’s in between is usually interesting, but is more than occasionally in danger of becoming a predictable drab chronology of the life of a man in between trips to the stage.

Steinmeyer conquers this through the simple passion of his storytelling. Even in its duller moments, The Last Greatest Magician in the World is an engrossing work of biography, an insight into a mysterious world of showmen, floating princesses, levitating cards and exotic illusions. At its worst, you’ll still want to keep reading, and its best you’ll ache for the return of the era, and the man, it illuminates.

The Last Greatest Magician in the World is available Feb. 1 from Tarcher/Penguin.

Advance Reading Copy courtesy of Penguin Group.