Magic Places


Book Description

Magic Places presents parents and teachers with information about the nature of creativity, along with easy-to-follow suggestions for fostering the natural unfolding of each child's creativity. This popular book has been re written in 2007.




The Magic Carpet's Guide to Earth's Forbidden Places


Book Description

Where would you go if you had a magic carpet? Take the journey of a lifetime and explore 19 real-life, off-limits locations... Whether you'd prefer to visit a volcano, do some supernatural sightseeing in Area 51, take a tour of the remotest island on Earth, or plunder the Secret Archives of the Vatican, the magic carpet will cover the four corners of the globe - and reveal hundreds of hidden secrets in between!




Outside Lies Magic


Book Description

Outside Lies Magic is a book about the acute observation of ordinary things, about becoming aware in everyday places, about seeing in utterly new ways, about enriching your life unexpectedly. For more than 20 years, John R. Stilgoe has developed and practiced the art of exploring the everyday world around us, where so much lies hidden just beneath the surface, offering uncommon knowledge if we but know what to look for. In this remarkable book, Stilgoe inspires us to become explorers on our own-on foot or on bicycle-and by so doing to reap the benefits of escaping, even temporarily, the traps of our programmed lives. "Exploration encourages creativity, serendipity, invention," he writes. And while sharing his insights on how to explore, Stilgoe provides a fascinating pocket history of the American landscape, as striking in its originality as it is revealing. Stilgoe dissects our visual surroundings; his observations will transform the way you see everything. Through his eyes, an abandoned railroad line is redolent of history and future promise; front lawns recall our agrarian past; vacant lots hold cathedrals of potential. From the electrical grid overhead to fences, malls, and main streets, Stilgoe offers a fresh understanding of the links and fractures in our society. After reading Outside Lies Magic, your world will never look the same again.




Earth's Magic Places


Book Description

The photographer Tomás Mícek focuses on magical places brought forth by that great artist Mother Nature, places whose fantastic formations can most certainly compete with our sacred buildings and spaces.




Ancient Magic and Ritual Power


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.




Exploring Lost Hawaiʻi


Book Description

Covering all of the major Hawaiian Islands, this book takes readers on routes not found in traditional guidebooks, on journeys to the Hawai'i of old-places of powerful ali'i, wise kahuna, sacred heiau, and mysterious menehune. Sites of historical and cultural significance are described in detail and directions are given to each place.




Breakout


Book Description

Told in letters, poems, text messages, news stories, and comics--a series of documents Nora collects for the Wolf Creek Community Time Capsule Project--Breakout is a thrilling story that will leave readers thinking about who's really welcome in the places we call home. Nora Tucker is looking forward to summer vacation in Wolf Creek--two months of swimming, popsicles, and brushing up on her journalism skills for the school paper. But when two inmates break out of the town's maximum security prison, everything changes. Doors are locked, helicopters fly over the woods, and police patrol the school grounds. Everyone is on edge, and fear brings out the worst in some people Nora has known her whole life. Even if the inmates are caught, she worries that home might never feel the same. A Mighty Girl Best Book of the Year




Magic Lands


Book Description

The American West conjures up images of pastoral tranquility and wide open spaces, but by 1970 the Far West was the most urbanized section of the country. Exploring four intriguing cityscapes—Disneyland, Stanford Industrial Park, Sun City, and the 1962 Seattle World's Fair—John Findlay shows how each created a sense of cohesion and sustained people's belief in their superior urban environment. This first book-length study of the urban West after 1940 argues that Westerners deliberately tried to build cities that differed radically from their eastern counterparts. In 1954, Walt Disney began building the world's first theme park, using Hollywood's movie-making techniques. The creators of Stanford Industrial Park were more hesitant in their approach to a conceptually organized environment, but by the mid-1960s the Park was the nation's prototypical "research park" and the intellectual downtown for the high-technology region that became Silicon Valley. In 1960, on the outskirts of Phoenix, Del E. Webb built Sun City, the largest, most influential retirement community in the United States. Another innovative cityscape arose from the 1962 Seattle World's Fair and provided a futuristic, somewhat fanciful vision of modern life. These four became "magic lands" that provided an antidote to the apparent chaos of their respective urban milieus. Exemplars of a new lifestyle, they are landmarks on the changing cultural landscape of postwar America.




The Bucket List: Places to Find Peace and Quiet


Book Description

Explore hard-to-find quiet spots in urban jungles, ultimate wilderness hideouts, the world's best mindfulness and meditation retreats, and ancient centers of spiritual succor and artistic solace - perfect for whether you want to find yourself or get completely lost. This inspiring guide is full of ideas and inspirations for travel destinations around the world that invite you to renew yourself physically and spiritually - perfect for recent graduates, soon to be retirees, inveterate daydreamers and armchair travellers, and anyone considering taking a much needed sabbatical. When it is time to escape from the hectic, hurly-burly of ordinary life, this is where you can find a thousand delightful quiet and peaceful places that encourage you to relax. Featuring a range of escapes that include everything from momentary getaways in the heart of New York or Paris to longer contemplative visits to places that allow you to screen out the jangle of contemporary life, this is an expertly curated trove of peaceful places. It includes small parks and squares, lovely old churches and spiritual sanctuaries, off-the-beaten-path museums and galleries, hidden courtyards and gardens, tiny local eateries - and even cemeteries. Also included are wilder escapes in unspoiled natural settings that last over a weekend or longer, ideal for those whose idea of peace and quiet involves birdsong and the gentle rustle of leaves. From the magic of watching the sun rise over the desert at the top of Mt. Sinai, to the perfect quiet of an antiquarian book dealer in London or a Buddhist temple in Tokyo, each destination offers the chance for space, a time to think, and provides a moment to savor the world around us in a new light.




The Magic Mindset


Book Description

Sometimes, it's not easy to find the silver lining. While positivity is about looking at the bright side of things, the magic mindset embraces and accepts that it is not always possible to do so. Sometimes things get so bleak that our mind refuses to accept that there can be a silver lining. In this book, Preeti Shenoy gives you a set of principles for every area of life, designed to help us shift our perspective from hopelessness to hope, from despondency to joy, from cynicism to belief - a belief that change is coming, and things are not as bad as they seem. Perfect reading for the difficult times that we are living in, The Magic Mindset is full of tips, suggestions, fun exercises and practical advice on career, family, health, relationships, finances, social media, and more. It also includes inspiring stories and anecdotes from Preeti's own life. A cornerstone for all those who want to change their outlook, The Magic Mindset helps us build a purposeful and joyful life.