The Ambivalent Magician

Author: Simon Hawke
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781974120116
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Book Description
Trying to discover time travel, genius scientist Dr. Marvin Brewster accidentally transports himself to a parallel universe where magic really works and reality is ... a little different. His knowledge of science causes him to be mistaken for a sorcerer, something he exploits in his efforts to survive and find his missing time machine, which is the only way that he can get back home. However, what Brewster doesn't know is that his time machine has fallen into the hands of Warrick Morgannan, the powerful Grand Director of the Sorcerers and Adepts Guild, and using magic in his attempts to learn how the machine works, Warrick keeps putting people into the machine and making them disappear ... only to reappear in our world, where a British tabloid reporter stumbles on what may be the biggest story of his life. Frustrated in his efforts to learn the secret of the time machine, Warrick turns his magic on the Narrator, the disembodied "voice in the ether" that only he can hear, determined to find a way to interfere with the Narrator's mysterious ability to control events...

The Magician's Book

Author: Laura Miller
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316040266
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Book Description
Enchanted by Narnia's fantastic world as a child, prominent critic Laura Miller returns to the series as an adult to uncover the source of these small books' mysterious power by looking at their creator, Clive Staples Lewis. What she discovers is not the familiar, idealized image of the author, but a more interesting and ambiguous truth: Lewis's tragic and troubled childhood, his unconventional love life, and his intense but ultimately doomed friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien. Finally reclaiming Narnia "for the rest of us," Miller casts the Chronicles as a profoundly literary creation, and the portal to a lifelong adventure in books, art, and the imagination.

The Sculptural Imagination

Author: Alex Potts
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300088014
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 442

Book Description
Potts also offers a detailed view of selected iconic works by sculptors ranging from Antonio Canova and Auguste Rodin to Constantin Brancusi, David Smith, Carl Andre, Eva Hesse and Louise Bourgeois - key players in modern thinking about the sculptural. The impact of minimalism features prominently in this discussion, for it disrupted accepted understanding of how a viewer interacts with a work of art, thereby placing the phenomenology of viewing three-dimensional objects for the first time at the center of debate about modern visual art."--Jacket.

Mediality on Trial

Author: Ehler Voss
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110416417
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 668

Book Description
This volume addresses controversies connected to the testing of the capacities and potentials of mediums. Today we commonly associate the term "medium" with the technical communication between transmitters and receivers. Yet this term likewise applies to those who cooperate with agencies that exceed the presumed domain of the material world. Insofar as one presumes a division between distinctly opposed categories of religion and the secular, technical media tend to be associated with the secular and human (trance) mediums tend to be associated with religion after 1900. This volume concerns the ways in which the term medium still marks an overlapping of – and thus problematizes – the aforementioned division between religion and the secular, the personal and the technological. The term medium carries with it a seed of doubt that is itself inseparable from investment in the medium's power: insofar as they communicate with an "other" realm, mediums offer the hope and promise of new possibilities and improved efficiency, and thus of a better life; yet they have simultaneously been under suspicion of altering (or even inventing) the messages they communicate. It is due to this combination of promise and suspicion that "mediumism" has tended to evoke scientific, religious, and moral controversies. Thus, we can speak of a "mediumistic trial" – that is, a process in which a medium is put to the test concerning its potentials and trustworthiness. Around 1800, experts were asked if a modern secular institution would be capable of inspiring, domesticating or excluding trance mediumship. This question has stayed with us ever since, and the answers have remained inconclusive. That is why the past and present of mediumship may be asked to elucidate each other.

Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It

Author: Maile Meloy
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101104988
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 145

Book Description
One of the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2009-- now adapted into the feature film Certain Women, starring Kristen Stewart-- award-winning writer Maile Meloy's short stories explore complex lives in an austere landscape with the clear-sightedness that first endeared her to readers. Don't miss her new novel, Do Not Become Alarmed. Meloy's first return to short stories since her critically acclaimed debut, Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It is an extraordinary new work from one of the most promising writers of the last decade. Eleven unforgettable new stories demonstrate the emotional power and the clean, assured style that have earned Meloy praise from critics and devotion from readers. Propelled by a terrific instinct for storytelling, and concerned with the convolutions of modern love and the importance of place, this collection is about the battlefields-and fields of victory-that exist in seemingly harmless spaces, in kitchens and living rooms and cars. Set mostly in the American West, the stories feature small-town lawyers, ranchers, doctors, parents, and children, and explore the moral quandaries of love, family, and friendship. A ranch hand falls for a recent law school graduate who appears unexpectedly- and reluctantly-in his remote Montana town. A young father opens his door to find his dead grandmother standing on the front step. Two women weigh love and betrayal during an early snow. Throughout the book, Meloy examines the tensions between having and wanting, as her characters try to keep hold of opposing forces in their lives: innocence and experience, risk and stability, fidelity and desire. Knowing, sly, and bittersweet, Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It confirms Maile Meloy's singular literary talent. Her lean, controlled prose, full of insight and unexpected poignancy, is the perfect complement to her powerfully moving storytelling.

Magic and Magicians in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Time

Author: Albrecht Classen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 311055772X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 768

Book Description
There are no clear demarcation lines between magic, astrology, necromancy, medicine, and even sciences in the pre-modern world. Under the umbrella term 'magic,' the contributors to this volume examine a wide range of texts, both literary and religious, both medical and philosophical, in which the topic is discussed from many different perspectives. The fundamental concerns address issue such as how people perceived magic, whether they accepted it and utilized it for their own purposes, and what impact magic might have had on the mental structures of that time. While some papers examine the specific appearance of magicians in literary texts, others analyze the practical application of magic in medical contexts. In addition, this volume includes studies that deal with the rise of the witch craze in the late fifteenth century and then also investigate whether the Weberian notion of disenchantment pertaining to the modern world can be maintained. Magic is, oddly but significantly, still around us and exerts its influence. Focusing on magic in the medieval world thus helps us to shed light on human culture at large.

The Reluctant Sorcerer

Author: Simon Hawke
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781545229767
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Magic Is Alive, Science Is Afoot....Trying to discover time travel, absent-minded genius Dr. Marvin Brewster accidentally transports himself to a parallel universe where magic really works ... a land that resembles medieval England, but is populated by leprechauns, virgin-hating unicorns, coffee drinking beatnik vampire elves, rapping Rastafarian grunge dwarves, philosophically musing dragons, ambulatory vegetation, bumbling outlaws, gorgeous brigand queens, cursed were-princes and evil wizards. In a world where science is unknown, Brewster's knowledge results in his being mistaken for a sorcerer ... but the real sorcerers have a powerful, exclusive guild, and Brewster's not a member. As he searches for his missing time machine, Brewster sees no harm in the locals thinking he's a wizard, but the Grand Director of the Sorcerer's Guild is out to find this interloper and learn the secret of the strange device that he arrived in....

Laughing Matters

Author: Jody Baumgartner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135907773
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 388

Book Description
This book examines the role of humor in modern American politics. Written by a wide range of authors from the fields of political science and communication, this book is organized according to two general topics: how the modern media present political humor the various ways in which political humor influences politics. Laughing Matters is an excellent text for courses on media and politics, public opinion, and campaigns and elections.

Ancient Magic and Ritual Power

Author: Paul Mirecki
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004283811
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 496

Book Description
This volume contains a series of provocative essays that explore expressions of magic and ritual power in the ancient world. The essays are authored by leading scholars in the fields of Egyptology, ancient Near Eastern studies, the Hebrew Bible, Judaica, classical Greek and Roman studies, early Christianity and patristics, and Coptology. Throughout the book the essays examine the terms employed in descriptions of ancient magic. From this examination comes a clarification of magic as a polemical term of exclusion but also an understanding of the classical Egyptian and early Greek conceptions of magic as a more neutral category of inclusion. This book should prove to be foundational for future scholarly studies of ancient magic and ritual power. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.

The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America

Author: Brian P. Levack
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199578168
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 645

Book Description
A collection of essays from leading scholars in the field that collectively study the rise and fall of witchcraft prosecutions in the various kingdoms and territories of Europe and in English, Spanish, and Portuguese colonies in the Americas.