The Monarch of Manacles: Escape! The Story of the Great Houdini by Sid Fleischman

Harry Houdini is the perfect example of the self-made American. Born Erich Weiss in Budapest in 1874, he re-created himself and was born again as Harry Houdini, taking his first name from his childhood sound-alike nickname, "Ehrie," and his last name as an Italianate version of the name of his idol, the French magician Jean Louis Robert-Houdin. A hard-scrabble childhood in Appleton, Wisconsin, which Harry claimed as his birthplace, drove him to leave home at age twelve, a short, skinny kid who seemed to be born with street smarts and a talent for self-promotion.

Like many dropout kids with big dreams, he made his way to New York City, where working in a necktie factory, he made a friend with an older teen, an amateur magician, who no doubt taught him a trick or two. But it was a book, a worn copy of The Memoirs of Robert-Houdin, Ambassador, Author, and Conjurer, that really turned him to magic, and the rest, as we say, is history.

And no one is better suited to write that history than Sid Fleischman, award-winning author and amateur magician himself, who mastered a staggering quantity of Houdiniana to pull together the fascinating life of the King of Handcuffs and Master of Escape. Fleischman, who actually met Houdini's widow Bess as a young man, learned many of Houdini's secrets of illusion, but true to his avocation, reveals none in his leisurely account of Houdini's rise to become one of the best known celebrities of his age.

In one famous story, Fleischman recounts how Houdini flamboyantly turned what was a humiliating disappointment into a publicity triumph. Booked into his first big engagement abroad at London's Alhambra Theatre, Houdini arrived to find that the British had no record of the booking. Not about to lose his big chance, he talked the theatre manager into a wager. The manager agreed to give his act a try if Houdini could escape from Scotland Yard's own best shackles on their own turf. Here's how Fleischman tells it:

They hurried over to the police, where Scotland Yard men had Houdini wrap his arms around a pillar. The officers slapped several pairs of handcuffs on the self-crowned escape king.

These weren't stage handcuffs, the police superintendent pointed out with an air of confidence. They were the Yard's strongest. "Well, here's how we fasten the Yankee criminals who come over here and get into trouble," he added, and started for the door. "I'll come back for you in a couple of hours."

What happened next is legendary.

"Wait," cried Houdini. "I'll go with you. Here's the way the Yankees open the handcuffs."

The escape king walked away from the pillar, leaving the manacles in a junk heap on the floor.

Fleischman points out that in addition to being a remarkable physical presence, slight of stature but very strong and agile, Houdini was also an avid reader and master of the science of his craft. He apparently knew Scotland Yard's handcuffs would pop open if struck upon the precise sweet spot, and with the publicity he gained from this spectacle he became all the rage in Britain. While in Europe Houdini also perfected one of his most famous stunts, leaping manacled and chained into many famous rivers, gaining freedom after minutes underwater and bursting to the surface with the chains held high. In one anti-climactic moment in Germany, however, Harry emerged to the cheers of the crowd and crawled ashore, only to be arrested by the police for walking on the verboten grass.

Back in America, Harry's favorite publicity stunt became the straitjacket escape while suspended many stories above the watching throng below. In this period Harry made an elephant disappear, escaped from inside a half rotten "sea monster," walked through a brick wall, perfected his notorious "Chinese Water Torture Cell," starred in a few movies, and, ever searching for a new crowd pleaser, embarked on a campaign against charlatan spiritualists. As Fleischman puts it, "he was born running."

Seemingly indestructible, Houdini, of course, died suddenly, not inside a water chamber or a sunken coffin, but in a New York hospital. Scoffing at a doctor's diagnosis of appendicitis, but too weak to dress himself for his performance, he finished the show but died the next day of peritonitis, on October 31, Halloween, 1926, forever linking himself to the spirit world which he had sought so publicly to disprove.

Fleischman's affectionate and wry account of Houdini's life and exploits takes a measured but skeptical look at the hype that surrounded the great showman, while offering little-known stories about his early days, his lifelong love for the wife he married at age eighteen, and the many ups and downs of his very public career. Photos, playbills, and theatre posters fill the pages of Escape! The Story of the Great Houdiniwith glimpses into one of the first media supercelebrities of the twentieth century.

Sid Fleischman's biography of the Great Houdini is a 2007 ALA Notable Book.