The Secret of Mental Magic Paperback – 1 December 2006

The first problem with this item is that, at the time I got it, I got it from the Amazon Marketplace; as I recall, there were none available directly from Amazon itself. Now there are, BUT, it is fully possible that the errors I encountered from this seller (Nevido Books) might also occur from Amazon directly as I believe the problem would effect the entire press run.As it is, this book has been, until only very recently, a traditionally rare Atkinson book; as opposed to his other, better-known volumes, this one has been very hard to obtain and, therefore, desirable. I have, in the past had no problems with facsimile printings of public-domain volumes, with the possible exception of faded content due to multiple generations of reprinting the same plates so, I was glad to see this offering and gladly bought one.However, this particular product came very badly defective - completely unreadable (unless you're a fan of gibberish). When it arrived, it looked like it might be quite good quality - it was a pleasingly large size and, therefore, a potentially comfortable enlargement, which I think is a step in a positive direction. BUT... every single page was only half-printed.Each page was printed on only its bottom half and, with only the TOP half of the individual page in question. This left, fully, half of each page missing and there was no effort made to compensate by text-bleeding to the next page-window so... you were just stuck if you actually wanted to know what the full content of each page was: there was a full content-break from page to page, making the effort to understand the author's intent completely impossible.This seems to be a problem of a registry-error during an automated printing run without adequate quality control. In past years I had been a proofreader for a very large publisher. There were multiple stages of quality-control that essentially eliminated the possibility of this type of error during a print run and, even if something fatal occurred - such as a misaligned or slipped plate on a press roller, I was empowered to observe the press run and stop the presses to prevent this error from continuing and, therefore, it would be impossible to have an entire press run be plagued with this type of serious error.BUT... worse than that: not only did this error actually occur at ...whatever company printed this volume... BUT!!! no effort to correct it occurred at ANY subsequent stage of the process, continuing throughout the cutting of the press sheets and all the way through binding AND ALL THE WAY TO SHIPPING! That means that, unless each individual volume is hand-xeroxed, there is an entire press run of useless, unreadable, junk books that every purchaser will demand and deserve a refund for.The fact is, I don't know if Nevido is the actual printer or, if they've been as victimized by some print shop as I was. I have demanded an exchange or refund and, pending that, will reserve my opinion on the shipper; they DO seem to have a history of reputable dealings heretofore, HOWEVER... until we have some further feedback on the quality of these volumes, it is possible that EVERY volume currently available for sale is one of these Extremely Defective ones, no matter WHO the shipper is. In other words: "GOOD LUCK!" - - - - - -I tried to write a follow-up review but Amazon wouldn't let me - it was just to clear Nevido's name on this shoddy product. They responded almost instantly with a refund that day. They deserve the extremely high customer-satisfaction rating they've earned. They also let me know that the print error that these volumes are plagued with is the fault of the publisher - Nevido is just a reseller for the Amazon Marketplace and had nothing to do with the problem. It's a shame really, because I very badly want a good copy of this volume and, currently, don't know where to get one

..it can be a bit of a slog to finish it. It’s about twice as long as it should have been.

This arrived with a dried sticky substance on the cover, the book is bent up in some places and the text cuts off on every page. It is unreadable.