Tabbo, Dr. Fabio: Close-up Hypnosis Vol. 1: Stop-Smoking Mentalism ©2005; Underwords Softcover, perfect-bound; 176 pages

Image from Underwords

Comment (Jim Fletcher): A spectator is asked to participate in an experiment of stop-smoking hypnosis. He pretends to smoke an imaginary cigarette, and feels as if a real one was being used: he then brings this invisible cigarette closer to his hand, causing a warming sensation; and when he finally decides to stub it out on his hand, he feels a sharp burn. A Online-Visions review states, "this a doctoral thesis on performing." Basically it is close-up magic with an hypnotism presentation. The book is divided into 5 main sections.
It is expensive for a book less than 200 pages, but the amount of crammed information you get is absolutely unbelievable. I don’t perform the effect because I don’t care about hypnotism, but I have applied many of the subtleties and tools/methods described to the magic tricks already in my repertoire, and they really make a difference in terms of audience impact.
I think this book is much more than the effect described, it is a treasure trove on presentation, physical and psychological subtleties, linguistics tools, use of gimmicks etc.
In my opinion, this is an underground book that is worth its weight in gold, and I hope this review will somewhat help in promoting it, so that the publisher continues with further volumes. On the other hand, I understand that people who actually perform the effect would certainly prefer to keep quiet about it, so all apologies!

Contents: (numbers are not page numbers)

1 General Approach: methodology and performance philosophy
2 Gimmicks section
3 Effect (the bulk of the book)
4 Variations
5 "Real Hypnosis" Part

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