Matthias Buchinger: "The Greatest German Living"

Twenty-nine inches tall, born without hands and feet, husband of four and father of fourteen, and celebrated throughout 18th-century Europe not only for his rare condition but for his remarkable skill as a performer, illusionist, and microscopic calligrapher, Matthias Buchinger might seem to be a figment of the fertile and devious imagination of Ricky Jay, a noted illusionist himself, were it not for the marvelous archival record that Jay has assembled in this fascinating and amusing volume (and its accompanying exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art). Jay's text is as much a portrait of his fellow oddball historians and collectors as of his title subject, but none of them is more interesting, or certainly more impressive, than the great Buchinger himself, whose ingeneous, imperturbable character Jay pieces together from the shards that remain from his singular life.