"Hiding the Elephant" is great. It's about the development of magic during the 1800's, and how there were different guys thinking up tricks. By the same author (whose name eludes me right now) is a book about Chung Ling Soo, an American/Brit who passed himself off as a Chinese magician so well that when he died (bullet catching trick), nobody believe that he wasn't from China.
"The Physics of Football" is also good. So is anything by RC Sproul.