Harry Lorayne

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Harry Lorayne (born 1926) is a memory-training specialist and magician who has been called "The Yoda of Memory Training" by Time magazine. He is well known for his mnemonic demonstrations and has appeared on "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson." [1] His book The Memory Book was a New York Times bestseller.

Lorayne is also a notable figure in the card magic world and has published several books and videos on that topic. He is a writer of technical literature for magicians and has a clear and informal writing style. Magic magazine May 1999 included him in a list of the 100 most influential magicians of the 20th century.

Lorayne wrote and published the magazine Apocalypse for twenty years (later republished in books). His latest book for magicians is Lorayne: The Classic Collection, an updated collection of his first four magic books of the 1960s, and recently he completed Mathematical Wizardry—magic with numbers.

Lorayne has also coauthored The Memory Book(ISBN 0-345-41002-5) with Jerry Lucas.

To show his amazing memory power, Harry Lorayne would stand beside the President of the club he was visiting and be introduced to each member. The number of members of a club could often reach up to 1,500. After an hour and a half, Lorayne would speak about memory for about 20 minutes and then ask if anyone had a question. He promised that if he couldn't greet the questioner by name, he would pay him or her $1,000. Amazingly, he remembered the names of every member of the audience.^{[citation needed]}

In 1961, Harry Lorayne published a book called Secrets of Mind Power. The book tells readers how to improve their thinking skills for optimal success and says: "Don't take things for granted, or as truisms, merely because you hear them proclaimed loudly, repetitiously, and from people or sources that you've been made to believe are incapable of stating anything but facts." The book gained many avid readers, including a few icons. In Chronicles: Volume 1, Bob Dylan writes that he read Lorayne's book shortly before breaking through as a music star after finding it in the book collection of a friend.

In 2007, Lorayne published Ageless Memory, which he called his legacy book.