Harry Houdini precariously suspended over subway tracks.

Casanova in Bondage: The Famed Lover’s Flight from a Supermax Prison

Online:

• Who Was Casanova? The personal memoir of history’s most famous lover reveals a misunderstood intellectual who befriended the likes of Ben Franklin – Smithsonian Magazine
• When Casanova Met Mozart – Smithsonian Magazine
• Letter’s to Milena – Franz Kafka
• (Video) Casanova Pilot – Daily Motion

Print:

• The Story of My Life, by Giacomo Casanova,
• Casanova: The World of a Seductive Genius, by Laurence Bergreen
• Casanova: Actor Lover Priest Spy, by Ian Kelly

Antimatter: Unfeasible to Capture, Impossible to Ignore

Online:

• Antimatter Captured: Scientists succeed in trek to capture atoms of antimatter – Triumf
• We Captured Antimatter for 16 Minutes: What That Actually Means – Motherboard
• The Five Greatest Mysteries of Antimatter – New Scientist

Print:

• Antimatter, by Frank Close
• Mirror Matter: Pioneering Antimatter Physics, by Robert L. Forward, Joel Davis

Nuns on the Run

Online:

• The Pure American Woman and the Wicked Catholic Priest: An Analysis of Anti-Catholic Literature in Antebellum America – Marie Anne Pagliarini 
• Roads to Rome: The Antebellum Protestant Encounter with Catholicism – Jenny Franchot  – 
• Maria Monk: A Nun’s ‘Secrets’ Revealed – Joe Nickell 
• Maria Monk Exposes Roman Catholic Church Crimes – Best Hoaxes and Pranks
• The Evangelization Station – the Real Maria Monk – J. Bernard Delany

Print:

• The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, by Maria Monk
• Six Months in a Convent, by Rebecca Reed
• Fire & Roses: The Burning of the Charlestown Convent, 1834, by Nancy Lusignan Schultz

Escape to the Frozen North

Online:

• Planning to Flee to Canada? Try Accessing the Immigration Website First – CNN
• Urban Camouflage: Dressing For Success – The Success Of Going Unnoticed – TJ Miller

Print:

• Getting The Hell Out Of Dodge: A Handbook For Urban Escape And Evasion
• 100 Deadly Skills: The SEAL Operative’s Guide to Eluding Pursuers, Evading Capture, and Surviving Any Dangerous Situation, by Clint Emerson

The Great Locomotive Chase: The Real Story Behind the Movie “The General”

Online:

• Civil Discourse: A Blog of the long Civil War Era
• Atlanta Cyclorama – The Atlanta History Center
• The Southern Museum In Association with the Smithsonian Institution 
• (Pod Cast) Andrews’ Raid, or: The Great Locomotive Chase Pt. 1 – Stuff You Missed in History Class
• (Pod Cast) Andrews’ Raid, or: The Great Locomotive Chase Pt. 2 – Stuff You Missed in History Class

Print:

• The Great Locomotive Chase: A History of the Andrews Railroad Raid Into Georgia in 1862, by William Pittenger
• Stealing the General: The Great Locomotive Chase and the First Medal of Honor, by Russell S. Bonds, 2007
• Civil War Curiosities: Strange Stories, Oddities, Events, and Coincidences, by Webb Garrison

Becoming Houdini in Authoritarian Eastern Europe

Print:

• Houdini!!!: The Career of Ehrich Weiss, by Kenneth Silverman
• The Life and Many Deaths of Harry Houdini, by Ruth Brandon
• The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America’s First Superhero, by William Kalush, Larry Sloman

For each salon, we invite our speakers to share the resources and interesting reading they came across in researching their talk, so that we can all dig more deeply. This reading list was compiled by Odd Salon with Leonard Apeltsin, Crystal Riley, Barbara North, Gwen Rose, Marcelo Pontin, and Christian Cagigal. Thank you!