My Path to Magic


Irina Syromyatnikova - 2013
    In Russia, "My Path to Magic" is a very popular series of three novels in the subgenre of technomagic. The first book of the same name is followed by "A Combat Alchemist" and "Benefits of the Dark Side."Against a backdrop of numerous fantasy novels, this book stands out as a wolfhound among lapdogs. It features intrigue, eclectic ambience, easily relatable characters, a detailed and convincingly pictured world, and a balanced, well-developed plot. The number of characters is not so large as to get lost in them, but not so few as to lose interest. The series stands out as a surprisingly strong technofantasy.

The Dr. Wayne W. Dyer Audio Collection: Includes the Bestsellers: Real Magic - Pulling Your Own Strings - Your Erroneous Zones


Wayne W. Dyer - 1995
    Wayne Dyer is an inspirational guide to thousands. Now his main titles—including the perennial blockbuster Real Magic—are available in one boxed set perfect for gift-giving.Author Biography: Wayne W. Dyer is one of the most widely read authors today in the field of self-development. He is the author of many books, including such bestsellers as Your Erroneous Zones, You'll See It When You Believe It, and Real Magic. A psychotherapist, Dyer received his doctorate in counseling psychology from Wayne State University and the University of Michigan, and has taught at many levels of education from high school through graduate study. He is the co-author of three textbooks, contributes to numerous professional journals and lectures extensively in the United States as well as abroad. He appears regularly on radio and television shows around the country.

Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals


Christopher J. Payne - 2009
    From the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth, over 250 institutions for the insane were built throughout the United States; by 1948, they housed more than a half million patients. The blueprint for these hospitals was set by Pennsylvania hospital superintendent Thomas Story Kirkbride: a central administration building flanked symmetrically by pavilions and surrounded by lavish grounds with pastoral vistas. Kirkbride and others believed that well-designed buildings and grounds, a peaceful environment, a regimen of fresh air, and places for work, exercise, and cultural activities would heal mental illness. But in the second half of the twentieth century, after the introduction of psychotropic drugs and policy shifts toward community-based care, patient populations declined dramatically, leaving many of these beautiful, massive buildings--and the patients who lived in them--neglected and abandoned. Architect and photographer Christopher Payne spent six years documenting the decay of state mental hospitals like these, visiting seventy institutions in thirty states. Through his lens we see splendid, palatial exteriors (some designed by such prominent architects as H. H. Richardson and Samuel Sloan) and crumbling interiors--chairs stacked against walls with peeling paint in a grand hallway; brightly colored toothbrushes still hanging on a rack; stacks of suitcases, never packed for the trip home. Accompanying Payne's striking and powerful photographs is an essay by Oliver Sacks (who described his own experience working at a state mental hospital in his book Awakenings). Sacks pays tribute to Payne's photographs and to the lives once lived in these places, "where one could be both mad and safe."

The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science


Will Storr - 2013
    Why don't facts work? Why, that is, did the obviously intelligent man beside him sincerely believe in Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden and a six-thousand-year-old Earth, in spite of the evidence against them? It was the start of a journey that would lead Storr all over the world--from Texas to Warsaw to the Outer Hebrides--meeting an extraordinary cast of modern heretics whom he tries his best to understand. He goes on a tour of Holocaust sites with David Irving and a band of neo-Nazis; experiences his own murder during past-life regression hypnosis; discusses the looming One World Government with iconic climate skeptic Lord Monckton; and investigates the tragic life and death of a woman who believed her parents were high priests in a baby-eating cult. Using a unique mix of highly personal memoir, investigative journalism, and the latest research from neuroscience and experimental psychology, Storr reveals how the stories we tell ourselves about the world invisibly shape our beliefs, and how the neurological "hero maker" inside us all can so easily lead to self-deception, toxic partisanship, and science denial.

Evolutionary Psychology I: The Science of Human Nature


Allen D. MacNeill - 2010
    MacNeill examines the surprising - and sometimes unsettling - answers to this most basic of human questions. The remarkable new field of evolutionary psychology takes a scientific approach to the evolution of human nature. Analyzing human behavior in relation to food, clothing, shelter, health care, and sex, Evolutionary Psychology proves an immensely stimulating exploration of human endeavor.

A Flare of Love (Jaylior, #4)


Elodie Colt - 2018
    Then he became her enemy.Now, it was time to become her savior.Haylie didn’t know how much more she could take. Her father? Mysteriously alive and determined to become a part of her life. Dylan? Unreachable. Caught in an inner war. Trapped in his own personal hell.She just wanted it to end. But the game wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.Dylan was lost. Lost in an endless state of white-hot rage. Lost in his own torturing mind, tearing him apart little by little. Lost until she saved him, slamming right into his soul and slaughtering his demons while putting her life on the line.She was the only thing stable in his life. The only one to make his past bearable. The only one to make his future livable. He’d sacrifice everything to give her the life she deserved, far away from the battles and the constant pain, but danger was once again hot on their heels...

The Memory of an Elephant


Alex Lasker - 2021
    Interwoven with his narrative are the tumultuous lives of the family who raised and then lost him: a famed hunting guide and his wife, who runs an animal orphanage (a conflict that in time upends their marriage); their son and daughter; and the young Kikuyu who finds the orphaned elephant and becomes part of the Hathaway family. This timeless story is alternately heartwarming and heartbreaking, spanning east Africa, Great Britain and New York from 1962 to 2015.