Being such a fan of Penn & Teller buying this book was an easy decision, but instead of learning more about Teller, the magician and the person, this book is about his parents, more specifically his father. It reads as if it's based upon a visit that Teller made to his parents house in Philadelphia. His Pad and Mam start to bring out boxes of letters, photographs, cartoons and other artwork that has been kept over the years. This starts Joe and Irene reminiscing about their youth, Joe's trips around the country and how they met. The book includes lots of cartoons that Joe had drawn, hoping to make a living from it, and oil paintings by both Joe and Irene. The Kid, Teller, even tries his hand at painting to see if the artistic gene has been passed down to him.

Looking back at my grandparents the only psychical records we have are albums of photographs. As far as I know none of them kept journals of any kind. When they died all their tales and experiences passed on with them. But for the next generation all they'll need to do to find out what Uncle Carl got up to is to do a Google search or look at photos on flickr. The question is would they want to?

To be honest I wasn't all that interested in the tricks in this book. I was much more interested in the anecdotes. For instance how Teller, the more technical of the two, had to find certain breeds of cockroaches so they could be dumped on David Letterman's desk.

The best chapter in the whole book describes how Teller's scleral shells were made. This alone, to me at least, was worth the price of the book. If you want to try this at home, do what Penn says in 'The Most Unpleasant World of Penn & Teller' video and only use a very fine grain plaster of paris when making the cast of each eyeball. Just the black and white photos make this look like a very unpleasant procedure indeed.

One section on the Plugs page at the back really dates the book, and possibly me:

Got a modem? Call MOFO EX MACHINA, the bitchin'est BBS in the jungle. Just call 212-764-3834, hit ENTER twice, and type the password MOFO (300 or 1200 baud, 8 bits, 1 stop, no parity).

I'm certainly not going to dial long distance to see if the bulletin board is still up and running.

If you're a fan, and you can get hold of a copy, it is worth the money.