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Book Review, © Copyright 1997, Jim Loy
James Randi is also called "The Amazing Randi." He is a magician, escape artist, and investigator of the supernatural. He has also written the excellent book, Flim Flam! Uri Geller is a mediocre magician, and extremely popular psychic who is most famous for bending spoons.
One magician does not expose the tricks of another magician. But, what Geller does amounts to a con game, based upon simple magic tricks. He does not claim to be a magician. And Randi tells how these simple tricks are probably done. He, and any number of magicians can do the same tricks, more reliably.
Geller reads minds, makes watches start ticking, and other things. But he is most famous for bending objects (keys, forks, spoons, and other things), seemingly without effort. Bending objects by magic is fairly simple, and Randi shows how it is done. It is just typical magic show misdirection.
Amazingly, what seems to make Geller more believable is that his tricks don't always work. Like most mediums and psychics, he complains that his tricks don't work because of the negative thoughts of skeptics around him. Magicians who tried that would be out of work.
I think that the most important thing about this book is that we see how willing people are to believe in Geller, even when they see evidence of fraud. People even think that nobody could fool them, so these tricks must be real. Even scientists trying to test Geller design sloppy tests, because they are experts at testing honest subjects and physical phenomena, not fraud. And they are fooled in the most embarrassingly simple ways.
Read this book. It is very good. At the very least, you will learn how to bend a spoon.
So, Geller is not a real psychic (with actual powers), right? Well, he could still be a psychic, even though magicians can easily do his tricks better than he does. But, the point is that Geller is probably not a real psychic, he is probably trying to con you and everybody else. The fact that he's somewhat inept is not evidence that he is on the level.
To order this book, click Amazon.com (goes directly to this book).