This book, originally by Victor Farelli first published in 1948 by George Armstrong, has long been out of print.
Quite recently, this manuscript has been produced by Pete Biro (in January 2008) with the permission of the copyright holder, Martin Breese.

I bought a copy from Mr. Biro and this is a short review.

The book is comb-bound and has the full Ramsay routine printed inside.

The book starts with a rough outline of the effect and then moves on to what is needed in the way of apparatus.
This describes in some detail the requirements to perform this routine.
The table, the cups, the balls (all of them), the fruit, the paper coils and the wand.

From there, you are taken into the routine itself.
This begins with the passing of the wand through the cups. Mr Ramsay did this differently to most, he reversed the cup.

The techniques for producing the balls are then discussed.
This is something that seems to be quite rare these days, most magicians' routines just dump out the balls with no more made of them.
The balls are the stars, in my opinion. It is the balls that vanish, appear etc.

This book goes into some detail, there is a section on just how to place a ball under a cup.
John Ramsay's subtleties are revealed as the book is read, worth buying for this alone.

Loading balls is covered in great detail.
I can say that I have learned much from this alone.
Loading of small balls, large balls and fruit is all covered.

There is a marvelous section of Ramsay's "Vanish of a large ball in the air".
This is all about directing attention and is worth the price of the book on its own in my opinion.
All of the subtle ways of Ramsay can be found here!

There is a very convincing "drop vanish" in here.
Quite a few people use the Silent Mora wand spin to vanish a ball in their routine, Ramsay's "The Drop" does not use a wand, instead it uses two bare hands to produce a very convincing vanish that may be used for other things.

The production phase of two paper coils was something that I think only John Ramsay performed.
This was an "afterthought" of Ramsay's, he was unsatisfied with the end of his C&B routine and this novel finish to his routine was added.
The appearance of the coils is a very effective and surprising end to the routine.

All of this and more is explained in detail in the book.

There are 42 black & white illustrations that accompany the text.
There is one colour illustration, this is a picture of the RNT II  spun Ramsay Cups that were designed by Pete Biro a few years ago and resurrected recently.

This book costs $20 and is available as a limited edition from Pete Biro.

Mr. Biro is a pleasure to deal with and he even signed the book for me.

I heartily recommend this book for anyone who is interested in the Cups & Balls. Even if you do not "do" the routine, the methods of Mr. Ramsay will open up new vistas for the reader.

Tom

Thank you for that review. I haven't read a book review in a long time.

The part you said about producing the balls is so true. Today we just dump them on the table. Maybe today's magician figures everybody knows there will be balls anyhow. But when I've done the C&B, it seems people have never seen it before. Might as well pull the balls out of thin air. Like you said, they're the stars.

Tom

What a great review.  I need to get a copy of this booklet, I was looking online for a performance of the routine but couldn't find one.

I agree 100% about making the balls appear, I place great emphasis on this in my own routine (and I believe my method is original to me also)

Bri

Hi, Tom

Nice review indeed

I'm wondering. Is this the same routine with the one you can found in "Magic of John Ramsay" by Andrew Galloway ?

and the routine is really great...

Cheers
Andre

Good question Andre!
I have The Ramsay Classics by Galloway (1977 first edition, hard bound). The C&B routine has a production of mouth coils from the cups that is not included in the DVD set that came out by Galloway. I don't recall him even mentioning it on the DVD, and it was one of the elements that really attracted me to the routine.
Thanks for posting the review Tom, nice work breaking it down into its parts.

Thanks for the nice words Gents.

I think I said that this book was a limited edition.
I'm not sure how many Mr. Biro has so if you want one...

Bri, I have never seen a performance of this routine on-line. I think the only place to see it is, as Don Said, on the Andrew Galloway DVD. Even then, the mouth coils are not used, again, as Don said.