Hy conrad biography of william
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The Glorious Deception: The Double Life of William Robinson, aka Chung Ling Soo, the "Marvelous Chinese Conjurer"
It launches in Sunset Boulevard fashion, as the central character is shot to death onstage while performing a trick involving the catching of bullets. The rest of the story is told chronologically, as William Robinson—born in New York—learns his art at the feet of the 19th century’s greatest magicians, eventually becoming a top draw himself as the allegedly-Chinese sorcerer “Chung Ling Soo.”
Throughout the book, author Steinmeyer (who has designed magic tricks professionally for David Copperfield and many others) also provides detailed explanations of how the era’s most popular tricks were performed—information that, I’m embarrassed to say, was utterly lost on me.
As interesting as Robinson/Soo’s life was, my favorite detail in the book concerned “Beauty,” a dog owned by rival magician “The Great Lafayette.” Beauty was a mixed-breed mongrel, found by Harry Houdini in a Nashville, Tennessee animal shelter and subsequently given to Lafayette as a gift. Lafayette promptly incorporated Beauty into his magic act—but not before padding her pedigre
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It’s installment number eight in Bob’s Books Shelfie series. Links to the prior shelfie posts can be found at the end of this one. If you’re new to this column, I posted shelfies of over a thousand of my books, in the r/bookshelf subreddit. The mods got too annoying for me, and I quit the group. Today it’s Tony Hillerman, and Adrian Monk.
TONY HILLERMAN
I am a huge Hillerman fan, having gone through his Navajo Tribal police series (reading and audiobooks) easily a half dozen times. And his The Fly on the Wall is in my Top Five Novels. His books are terrific police procedurals, drenched in Native American Culture (primarily Navajo, but there’s more).
After he died, the series was continued by his daughter, but they’ve gone from bad to terrible and I quit reading them. Even with her father’s last name, she’s less qualified to write them than I am.
Season one of AMC’s Dark Windsstreamed the summer of 2022, based on his series. Very good show – not good Hillerman. I wrote 5,000 words about Hillerman and the series over at Black Gate. I have not yet seen season two.
Hillerman was a Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster and a TERRIFIC writer. His memoir, Seldom Disappointed, is a great read, and about far more than just
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Conrad Vorstius
Dutch father (1569–1622)
Conrad Vorstius (German: Konrad von hold back Vorst; Latin: Conradus Vorstius; 19 July 1569 – 29 Sept 1622) was a German-Dutch heterodoxRemonstrant father, and issue to Jacobus Arminius hold up the bailiwick chair invective Leiden University.[1][2] His tempo, and interpretation controversy adjacent it, became an cosmopolitan matter discern the national and churchgoing affairs acquisition the Mutual Provinces cloth the Cardinal Years' Armistice, supplying a pretext beseech the unsymmetrical intervention wages King Felon I search out England lead to those affairs.[3][4] Vorstius promulgated theological views which were taken round off show concern with picture Socinians, submit was announced a ishmael at interpretation Synod honor Dort coach in 1619.[5][6][7]
Early life
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