I've long admired John Guastaferro's thoughtful, deceptively simple, commercial magic, but I've missed the boat on previous printings of his best selling Vanishing Inc release One Degree. However, the magic company has now re-released this beloved book alongside the release of his follow-up collection of card magic, The Nth Degree (which I will be reviewing separately).

I'm regretful that I'm only joining the party on John's work now: it's loaded with clever structure, favours maximum impact out of minimal methods, and is all highly performable in the real world. These aren't angle-sensitive pieces of visual eye candy that are better for social media, nor are they softball tricks built more for the hobbyist than the working professional; John's magic is stuff you will use, both for its practicality and its strength.

On a superficial level, this reprint by Vanishing Inc is, unsurprisingly, great: a cloth hardcover with an attractive dust jacket, plus writing that's clear and concise accompanied by sufficient photos. I had no problem following or learning the material in this book, which I can't always say for others I read!

One Degree isn't a lengthy book; it falls well short of 150 pages and contains 20 tricks plus 6 thoughtful essays. The overarching theme of One Degree is John's theory that, sometimes, major shifts in a magic trick's impact can be created by the most micro of adjustments: a different rhythmic beat here, a slightly reordered sequence of revelations there. It's a compelling idea and one that many magicians could learn from. Sometimes, it doesn't take a full overhaul to turn a trick from merely good to truly excellent.

But how's the material inside? There's plenty of gold in One Degree, but I'll shout out a few of my personal favourites:

TRUTH IN ADVERTISING
The first trick in the book kicks it off with a bang. With an intriguing premise centring the influential power of advertising, a card is freely selected by a spectator and is revealed to be the only printed card in an otherwise fully blank deck! Even though they felt like they had a free choice, the magician has proven that they influenced them to pick that card. This is further illustrated by revealing that the selected card now has a different coloured back from the rest of the deck; a feature that clearly influenced the spectator without them even noticing. Finally, with a warning that you should never believe anything you see in advertising, it is revealed that the entire deck is now printed and the selected card is the only card with a blank face. This is a terrific opener that packs a lot of playful magic into a short timespan and carries numerous methodological benefits. With no deck switches and nothing to secretly ring in and out, you can perform this entire effect and be elegantly left with a regular, shuffled deck to use for further card magic. Even better: two simple moves accomplish the whole shebang. I can see this being a go-to opener for strolling performers.

EITHER OR
This is a fairly straightforward revelation of a selected card with a fun, intriguing framing and script approach. I like it for two reasons: firstly, it illustrates the power of scripting in turning a basic effect into something more elevated that can meaningfully connect with your spectator. Secondly, it has the devious feature of allowing you to set up your deck with a small or mid-size stack out in the open, preparing you for a subsequent trick that requires a pre-set bank of cards. I would use this effect for that feature alone!

PALM READER PLUS
This Bannon-esque effect milks a lot out of minimal handling. A card is selected and lost in the deck - let's say, The King of Clubs - then the four Aces are used in a pseudo-palm reading demonstration to try to determine what the selection was. Each Ace is held over the spectator's open palm until the magician gets a strong feeling around one of them, which ends up being the Ace of Clubs, a match for the suit of the selection. Then, the next two Aces change to match that suit, and the last Ace takes things a step further by changing into the full selected King of Clubs! Finally, as an unexpected kicker, the four cards in the magician's hand change into the four Kings, with the Aces nowhere to be found. Like much of John's magic, this is hardly difficult to do and manages plenty of magic out of just a few cards.

INTRO-VERTED
This is one of John's more popular pieces and it's easy to see why. Four Aces are found in the deck in increasingly surprising ways: the first one visually appears with a cut of the deck, the second one is found when the entire deck magically turns over except the Ace reversed in the middle, the third is found by visually appearing between the first two in a sandwich-style production, and the fourth appears on the spectator's open palm when the first three are rubbed against it. This has a great flow to it, it's visual, and it carries the advantage of allowing you to keep the backs of the other 48 cards in your deck hidden from view (while feeling like multiple backs are visible throughout the sequence), which leaves you able to finished the effect with a colour changing deck kicker if you desire.

HOMAGE TO HOMING
A rendition of Francis Carlyle's Homing Card, this cleverly structured, multi-phase effect sees a selected card jumping several times into the magician's pocket after vanishing over and over from among a pile of four Jacks. Then, as a surprise finale, the four Jacks travel to the magician's pocket, leaving the selected card in the hands on its own. I've performed multiple versions of this effect, and I can't wait to try John's: the phases flow together gorgeously and each vanish and reproduction from the pocket is accomplished in an entirely different way, which makes the method hard to trace for an audience.

BIDDLELESS
In John's version of the Biddle Trick, five cards are removed from a spectator-shuffled deck, and the spectator is asked to think of one of them. The five cards are then held and guarded by the spectator, and the magician reads the spectator's mind to tell them, little by little, what card they're thinking of. But that's not all: a magical pass over the five cards, and the spectator counts them to find there are now only four and one has vanished. The one that has vanished happens to be the thought-of card, which is then found to have reappeared reversed in the centre of the deck that's been sitting on the table the whole time. John's handling of this classic effect carries numerous strengths, including a clever way of getting a spectator to think of a specific card from a small bank with 100% effectiveness, and a very nonchalant means of setting up for the string of revelations to follow. This one is so simple in method, you may actually feel a little guilty for it.

OUT OF THE BLUE
It's not often that a packet trick truly fools or catches me by surprise, but Out of the Blue did just that the first time I saw it and I couldn't wait to learn it. Two sets of blue-backed four of a kinds are shown - say, the Kings and Aces - and the Aces are set aside. One by one, each King's blue back changes impossibly to red until all four have changed colour. Then the magician offers to change the Aces to red too, but it happens in an unexpected way with the red-backed Kings in the magician's hand changing into Aces, leaving four blue-backed Kings on the table where the Aces previously were. This may read a touch confusingly, but it is quite clear in performance and the transposition of the Kings and Aces is a very strong, surprising moment.

This represents only a taste of the terrific card magic in One Degree: a book that really shows off John Guastaferro's talent for creating entertaining, practical, impactful card magic. If you're a card worker, this book is a must. Highly recommended.

Thank you for the review.
If this book is supposed to have been re-released how come it is still hard to find?

Maybe I should just get The Nth Degree. Which do people prefer? One Degree or The Nth Degree?