Magic and Mayhem
Magic and Mayhem

Author: Derek Leebaert

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2010-09-07

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 1439141673

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AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ are the latest in a string of blunders that includes Vietnam and an unintended war with China from 1950 to ’53, those four fiascoes being just the worst moments in nearly a lifetime of false urgencies, intelligence failures, grandiose designs, and stereotyping of enemies and allies alike. America brought down the Soviet empire at the cold war’s most dangerous juncture, but even that victory was surrounded by myths, such as the conviction that we can easily shape the destinies of other people. Magic and Mayhem is a strikingly original, closely informed investigation of two generations of America’s avoidable failures. In a perfectly timed narrative, Derek Leebaert reveals the common threads in these serial letdowns and in the consequences that await. He demonstrates why the most enterprising and innovative nation in history keeps mishandling its gravest politico-military dealings abroad and why well-credentialed men and women, deemed brilliant when they arrive in Washington, consistently end up leading the country into folly. Misjudgments of this scale arise from a pattern of self-deception best described as "magical thinking." When we think magically, we conjure up beliefs that everyone wants to be like us, that America can accomplish anything out of sheer righteousness, and that our own wizardly policymakers will enable gigantic desires like "transforming the Middle East" to happen fast. Mantras of "stability" or "democracy" get substituted for reasoned reflection. Faith is placed in high-tech silver bullets, whether drones over Pakistan or helicopters in Vietnam. Leebaert exposes these magical notions by using new archival material, exclusive interviews, his own insider experiences, and portraits of the men and women who have succumbed: George Kennan, Henry Kissinger, Robert McNamara, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and Presidents Kennedy, Carter, and George W. Bush all appear differently in the light of magic, as do wise men from Harvard, Georgetown, Stanford, and think tanks such as RAND and Brookings, as well as influential players from the media and, occasionally, the military, including General David Petraeus as he personifies the nation’s latest forays into counterinsurgency. Magic and Mayhem offers vital insights as to how Americans imagine, confront, and even invite danger. Only by understanding the power of illusion can we break the spell, and then better apply America’s enduring strengths in a world that will long need them.

Magic and Mayhem
Magic and Mayhem

Author: S. Usher Evans

Publisher: Sun's Golden Ray Publishing

Published: 2017-04-04

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 1370221584

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From bestselling author S. Usher Evans comes the first book in a young adult clean contemporary fantasy series filled with magical hijinks and mystery. Fans of Tamora Pierce and Sabrina the Teenaged Witch will get caught up in this brilliant series about a supposedly normal teenager who discovers she's magical—and that's just the start of her problems. At the start of her senior year of high school, Lexie Carrigan is focused on two things—getting accepted to the college of her dreams and keeping her sisters safe. But when Gavon's apprentice, James Riley, appears on the first day of school, all of Lexie's well-laid plans of having a normal senior year go out the window. James says he's there to learn, but Lexie doesn't trust him, and she refuses to make another colossal mistake like she did with Gavon. Despite her best efforts, an unlikely friendship blossoms in the sparring ring, and James proves an adversary unlike any she's faced before: one she understands. Magic and Mayhem is the sequel to Spells and Sorcery, a young adult contemporary fantasy from author S. Usher Evans. Series Order: Spells and Sorcery Magic and Mayhem Dawn and Devilry Illusion and Indemnity Praise for Spells and Sorcery "I've read a few of S. Usher's books, and, honestly, I think YA is where she shines." ★★★★★ "This story with it’s mixing of teenage angst and magic discovery does it all perfectly." ★★★★★ "It keeps you guessing until things finally fall into place." ★★★★★ "A page turner for sure." ★★★★★ "[Lexie's] a very real girl with very real problems, when whomp! she has to figure out how not to screw up with magic as well." ★★★★★ Search Terms: YA Fantasy, Contemporary Fantasy, Witches, Wizards, High School Magic, Teenage witch, Witch books, Adventure books, Fantasy, Paranormal, Clean Books for Teens, Supernatural Mystery, Paranormal, Clean Fantasy, Clean YA books, Paranormal Academy, witches & wizards, young adult & teen, supernatural suspense, thriller, mystery, spells, witches, fantasy, paranormal fantasy, academy, urban fantasy, school, magic.

Magic and Mayhem
Magic and Mayhem

Author: Catherine Milos

Publisher: Catherine Milos

Published: 2020-05-01

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 1988951070

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Elizabeth McAllistar gave up her magic to stop Lucifer and lock him away. She’s a witch without magic who can’t see it, sense it, or use it. And Elizabeth’s not having a good time of it. Waking up covered in vomit and blood and no idea where you are is terrifying enough, but worse, a video surfaces showing Elizabeth killing men behind a bar she remembers drinking at. None of her friends are available to help and her only help rests with Liam, a mysterious witch who believes she needs help controlling new powers; that is, until Lucifer returns with the promise of restoring her magic to her and stopping the gods and Angels meddling in her life for good. In this final installment in the Angels and Avalon series, Elizabeth must trust Lucifer or risk blacking out and killing again.

WarCraft
WarCraft

Author: Mike Johnstone

Publisher: Arthaus

Published: 2004-04

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781588469540

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Magic and Mechanics Clash! Sorcerers and wizards truck with demons while tinkers and engineers build mighty engines of battle in this sourcebook for Dungeons and DragonsR WarcraftR the Roleplaying Game, which translates the hugely successful Warcraft computer game series into an exciting pen-and-paper roleplaying game world based on the popular d20 System rules! Requires the use of the Dungeons and DragonsR Player's Handbook, published by Wizards of the CoastR. This product utilizes updated material from the v.3.5 revision Designed with extensive input from the creative minds behind the Warcraft computer games, Magic and Mayhem includes: * In depth discussion of magic in the Warcraft setting, including rules for arcane corruption and a new type of magic called rune magic. * The new runemaster core class; 8 new prestige classes, including the warden and the steamwarrior; and several new feats. * New spells, as well as full descriptions of the new rune families and runes used by the runemaster. * A horde of new magic items and technological devices, as well as expanded details on creating technological devices. * Statistics for Warcraft constructs-the ultimate in the merging of magic and technology!

Magic and Mayhem
Magic and Mayhem

Author: Sylvia Day

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2009-10-13

Total Pages: 96

ISBN-13: 0061763551

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A lighthearted, fun Halloween anthology from New York Times bestselling authors Sylvia Day and Cathryn Fox! Magic: When good witch Brianna James uses her magic and writes a sexy, forbidden love spell on her thirty-first birthday, on the thirty-first day of October during a full moon, and conjures up on roguish, bad boy warlock, she has no idea that she'll experience a passion so deep and so intense it would forever turn her good girl days into bad girl nights. But, when that spell lands in the wrong hands, be prepared for a little mayhem... Mayhem: When Abigail Garvey steps into Conjure, the local magic shop, all she's looking for are a few props to round out her fortune teller Halloween costume. Abby isn't looking for a love spell that turns her drop-dead gorgeous, but long-oblivious neighbor into an aggressive alpha sex machine.. Sure his single-minded pursuit (and follow-through!) is the stuff her wickedest fantasies are made of, but how much of it is the real deal? And how much of it is just a little magical mayhem?

THE FUN HOUSE
THE FUN HOUSE

Author: Tom Bissinger

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2013-11

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 1493127519

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The Fun House by Tom Bissinger is a rollicking tale of coming of age in the sixties and seventies. Based on the childhood thrills he experiences at the fun house at Playland in San Francisco, Tom comes to understand that making fun houses and exploring those of others would become the defining quest of his life. He's brought up in privilege, and like his father who had at one time performed on Broadway, Tom's drawn to the theater. After boarding school and his immersion into a repertory theater company while attending Stanford, he lives in Paris then enlists in the army then moves to New York, and we are at the birth of the sixties, erupting like a bombshell, and Tom is there to celebrate and be open to the Golden Age of New York theater while simultaneously weaving the momentous events of that era into his story: assassinations, civil rights marches, and the Vietnam War. Sexual experimentation and drugs follow Tom as he ricochets through love affairs, directs plays, and marches in Selma. He moves to Philadelphia in 1969 to become the artistic director of the Theatre of Living Arts. In 1970, Tom abandons the legitimate theater and reinvents himself on Philly's South Street. Tom paints emotionally vivid portraits of neighborhood characters who hang out in Tom's new fun house: eccentric old-timers, newly minted hippies, artists, dopers, and a murderer. In 1977, Tom, his wife, Kristen, and their two-year-old travel for nine months as nomads: they live with Samoan families, spend two months on a fifty-foot trimaran in Fiji, live at Papunya Aborigine settlement in Australia, fall into a drug smuggler's den in Bali, and end up in an ashram in Sri Lanka before returning home as the book ends.

Witch Glitch
Witch Glitch

Author: Robyn Peterman

Publisher:

Published: 2015-12-07

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 9781941377079

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Witches and glitches and testicle obsessed cats... Oh my. One dilemma down and approximately 74,876,283 to go. I think being the Shifter Whisperer is hard-or Shifter Wanker as I enjoy referring to my new job-but healing wounded Shifters is easy compared to finding and eliminating the lurking freaking evil. Throw in a ghost, a potentially explosive ex-cellmate, a long lost dad and a smokin' hot werewolf who's convinced he's my mate, and suddenly it's party time-from hell. And this is my mission? Life is getting messy and I don't do messy. With feelings I didn't know I was capable of having, and the word love being thrown around like a football on Super Bowl Sunday, poofing away with a magical twitch of my nose is becoming more appealing by the moment. But to show I'm not a weenie, I'm gonna pull up my big girl panties and hurl some fireballs at Baba Yaga's older than dirt warlock posse if they don't pony up the info I need. If I don't burn the town of Assjacket down while trying to save it, I'm donning my red cape and playing who's the big bad wolf with a for real wolf who's hotter than any fireball. I just pray to the Goddess my heart doesn't get burned in the process...

A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts
A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts

Author: J. W. Ocker

Publisher: The Countryman Press

Published: 2016-10-04

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13: 1581575548

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Edgar Award-winning travel writer spends an autumn living in one of America's spookiest tourist destinations: Salem, Massachusetts Salem, Massachusetts, may be the strangest city on the planet. A single event in its 400 years of history—the Salem Witch Trials of 1692—transformed it into the Capital of Creepy in America. But Salem is a seasonal town—and its season happens to be Halloween. Every October, this small city of 40,000 swells to close to half a million as witches, goblins, ghouls, and ghosts (and their admirers) descend on Essex Street. For the fall of 2015, occult enthusiast and Edgar Award–winning writer J.W. Ocker moved his family of four to downtown Salem to experience firsthand a season with the witch, visiting all of its historical sites and macabre attractions. In between, he interviews its leaders and citizens, its entrepreneurs and visitors, its street performers and Wiccans, its psychics and critics, creating a picture of this unique place and the people who revel in, or merely weather, its witchiness.

Dragon World
Dragon World

Author: Tamara Macfarlane

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2021-03-16

Total Pages: 82

ISBN-13: 0744044952

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Immerse yourself in the rich, fascinating history of dragons in this illustrated gift ebook. Meet the fire-breathing beasts of mythology in this beautifully illustrated ebook brimming with scaled behemoths. Lurking in every corner of the earth, from the deepest depths of the oceans, to the tips of the tallest mountains, even tucked beneath the very ground that you tread on, dragons watch and wait. They take many forms--sea monsters, serpents, wild cats, eagles, and they represent many different things; Gods to be revered, evil kings to be feared, wise friends, and fierce foes. So, when you accidentally step on a sinewy vine and it whips out from under your feet, or invisible forces gently fan warm air across your face, or the acrid smell of cinders pokes at the back of your throat, how will you know whether to stand and wonder, or run and hide? Dragons have breathed fire into our minds since we could first imagine, but why do they exist in stories from every land in the world? Come in and explore Dragon World. Look into their lairs while they make shape-shifting mischief, playing with the weather and protecting earthly treasures. Soar across continents into tales as old as time. Prowl through the pages to discover rare dragon species. Find clues to track them and master how to draw them. Behold the earthly dragons of today!

Endling #1: The Last
Endling #1: The Last

Author: Katherine Applegate

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2018-05-01

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 1443434280

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First Katherine Applegate thrilled readers with the action-packed Animorphs series. Then she stole our hearts with the award-winning The One and Only Ivan. Now she takes us on an unforgettable journey in this first book of an epic middle grade series! Byx is the youngest member of her dairne pack. Believed to possess remarkable abilities, her mythical doglike species has been hunted to near extinction in the war-torn kingdom of Nedarra. After her pack is hunted down and killed, Byx fears she may be the last of her species. The Endling. So Byx sets out to find safe haven, and to see if the legends of other hidden dairnes are true. Along the way, she meets new allies—both animals and humans alike—who each have their own motivations for joining her quest. And although they begin as strangers, they become their own kind of family—one that will ultimately uncover a secret that may threaten every creature in their world. Building upon the success of her critically acclaimed novels such as The One and Only Ivan, Crenshaw, and Wishtree, while also returning to her action-packed fantasy roots of Animorphs, the Endling series is Katherine Applegate at her finest. With its enthralling characters, unique setting, and gripping adventure, this series is the perfect next read for fans of Rick Riordan, Brian Jacques, and Tui T. Sutherland.