A Strenuous Career: The Personal Challenge & Advertisement Scrapbook Of Houdini

For the first time, A Strenuous Career: The Personal Challenge and Advertisement Scrapbook of Harry Houdini places in your hands a full-color facsimile of one of the most significant artifacts from the life of Harry Houdini, the world’s greatest escape artist. Strictly limited to only 300 copies, this first edition is is among the largest and most important scrapbooks personally compiled by Houdini. Every page is reproduced directly from his working scrapbook, exactly as he assembled it, preserving the energy, ambition, and relentless drive that defined him.

Across these pages, you’ll witness the challenges Houdini accepted from around the globe and the advertisements that drew crowds into theaters and public squares. Carefully preserved ephemera reveal how Houdini crafted his legend in real time. This is not history filtered through interpretation. It is history as Houdini lived it:

• Feel the tension as authorities bind him in handcuffs and leg irons or lock him in the darkest jail cells.
• Sense the danger as he is sealed into wooden crates or water-filled containers, submerged, and sent sinking to the bottom of murky rivers.
• Experience what it was like to be bound in straitjackets and padded suits described as being for the “murderously insane,” restraints that could not hold him.
• Follow a career built on risk, spectacle, and mastery.

Meticulously reproduced from the original scrapbook, courtesy of Dr. Bruce J. Averbook’s historic archive in The Averbook Magic Art Museum and Library, this volume preserves the details of Houdini’s world.

The book features over 160 full-color pages in a 9" x 12" hardbound edition with a slipcase.