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Sleights of Mind  By  cover art

Sleights of Mind

By: Stephen L. Macknik, Susana Martinez-Conde, Sandra Blakeslee
Narrated by: Lloyd James
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Publisher's summary

Have you ever wondered how a magician saws a woman in half? Or makes coins materialize out of thin air? Or reads your mind? Magic tricks work because humans have a hardwired process of attention and awareness that is hackable. A good magician uses your mind's intrinsic properties against you in a form of mental jujitsu, to fool you every time, even when you know full well that you are being tricked. Now Stephen L. Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde, the founders of the exciting new discipline of neuromagic, have convinced some of the world's greatest magicians to reveal their techniques for tricking the brain. This fascinating book is the result of the authors' worldwide exploration of magic and how its ancient principles can now be explained using the latest discoveries of cognitive neuroscience. The secrets behind magic tricks reveal how your brain works not just when watching a magic show but in everyday situations. For instance, if you've ever found yourself paying for an expensive item you'd sworn you'd never buy, the salesperson was probably a master at creating the "illusion of choice," a core technique of magic. By popping the hood on your brain as you are suckered in by sleights of hand, Macknik and Martinez-Conde unveil the key connections between magic and the mind, and along the way make neuroscience more exciting and accessible than ever before.

©2010 Stephen L. Macknik and Susana Mrtibez-Conde, with Sandra Blakeslee (P)2010 Tantor

Critic reviews

"This book doesn't just promise to change the way you think about sleight of hand and David Copperfield---it will also change the way you think about the mind." (Jonah Lehrer, author of How We Decide)

What listeners say about Sleights of Mind

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Food for creativity. I want to learn some magic!

Would you listen to Sleights of Mind again? Why?

I am listening to it again, and making notes.

I found the material fascinating, but more important to me, it gave me a major insight on how to continue the plot-line of a novel I am writing. Just as the study of perspective and dimension in art is useful to artists, I think this book would be very useful to anyone who writes fiction because it provides a foundation for how to accomplish misdirection and suspense. (It's all in the MIND, right?). It also gave me some very useful thoughts around character development and setting. (Good Continuation is necessary in the mind of the reader too.)

Overall, it also gave me more food for thought about how the world works and how people interact with each other. I have long held the opinion that "reality is virtual" (our sense of smell is the only one that provides direct contact with our environment). This book explains that notion in a much clearer way than I had previously thought out. But beyond the illusion created by the senses (think Plato's Cave, or Maya, the veil of illusion), this book really illustrates the illusory nature of the day to day lives we lead, and helps me think about what more is possible.

What other book might you compare Sleights of Mind to and why?

I really don't know. The author mentions some attention experiments (that showed that the "subconscious" may be driving, and that the consciousness has only veto power) which I once read about in another book, but it wasn't anything like this book.However, that reminds me - I Googled the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness and discovered that their website has a wealth of studies on various aspects of mind research. There is more than will satisfy the most avid curiosity about neuroscience.

Which scene was your favorite?

I read this book more for useful information than entertainment. I think of it more in terms of threads than scenes.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Not plausible. However, having said that, a note to those who thought the narrator took too many pauses - just adjust the narration speed to 1.5x normal. That should take care of it.

Any additional comments?

As a non-magician, I now feel a need to design some of my own magic tricks

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4 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

So interesting

Gives you a better understanding and appreciation of magic and also the power of your mind!

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Casting light on things that weren’t even discussed

Come from a deep and broad background in many fields, technical, scientific, and otherwise, some of which were not even touched in this book, I now see them all in a new light.

I can hardly wait to explore the implications!

But that’s the trick, isn’t it?

Well done and thank you!

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Cool book

I really enjoyed this book. The narrator may have over emphasized the “h” in words the begin with “wh”, like the Cool Whip fiasco on Family Guy or the movie Hot Rod when he was saying what wheird. Otherwise it was really good.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Good but too annoying

I love magic and love neuroscience, but found this book hard to take. The neuroscience of magic is interesting and there were numerous fascinating tidbits in the book ??? but there are just as many (or more) boring or annoying parts. The repeated warnings about magic secrets being revealed were particularly annoying. The interesting stuff in this book could have been presented much more briefly. My advice is to read On Intelligence again instead of reading this book.

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9 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Just ok...

Those who read this book will understand what I mean with this rating. It’s OK overall.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Read the book instead.

This narrator has a bad habit of leaving long tedious pauses between sentences.......(pause)...........Very distracting.........(pause).........Very annoying..........(pause).........Interesting content, but I quit listening...........(pause)..........I couldn't take it any more.

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21 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Ugh

Here is another essay put in book form. The authors fail to take other things into concideration. There is more to the human brain besides what happens physically inside the brain. There are mental and emotional parts as well. The authors glanced over these parts. In order to do a task repetitiously a person subconscious come into play and bypasses the conscious. Example a professional driver. Magicians are able to fool the conscious but not the subconscious. The authors seem to do research on magic and then write a theory around their findings. The authors took too long to get to the point. This book Slights of Mind is a lot of hocus pocus. Would not recommend.

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5 people found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Revealed! Much Stage Magic (& Little Neuroscience)

If you have a strong interest in learning the spoilers, or inside secrets, to a lot of stage magic tricks, you may enjoy this book. But anyone looking to find useful, relevant, interesting applications to our "everyday self-deceptions" will fall asleep from boredom - which is fine, because the rest you will get will be more valuable than the education in applied neuroscience (or lack thereof). The premise was clever, but for everyone except stage-magic buffs, this will disappoint - there are many better books out there on the subject.

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5 people found this helpful

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    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Total crap

It’s not worth spending twelve more words on this turkey. And that’s all I’m going to do.

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