I am an amateur magicican and I must say this book is lousy at best. This is definately a book that you should judge by its title. (it is actually quite small barely fitting in your hand). As the latter suggests, it is quite difficult to hold on to this book since its really so small in size. As far as the contents, the book does not contain any useful slights. In addition, the tricks are not explained in a whole lot of detail and the pictures don't help at all either. I did learn some tricks which were quite good, but it took considerable time to learn based on the nature of the book. Do yourself a favor and buy Mark Wilson's Complete course in magic.