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Magical Thinking: True Stories
by Augusten BurroughsMore stories from Burroughs's weird childhood to his neurotic adulthood, hilarious, wicked and heart-breaking.
The Magical Stranger: A Son's Journey into His Father's Life
by Stephen RodrickOn November 28, 1979, squadron commander and Navy pilot Peter Rodrick died when his plane crashed in the Indian Ocean. He was just thirty-six and had been the commanding officer of his squadron for 127 days. Eight thousand miles away on Whidbey Island, near Seattle, he left behind a grief-stricken wife, two daughters, and a thirteenyear-old son who would grow up to be a writer—one who was drawn, perhaps inevitably, to write about his father, his family, and the devastating consequences of military service.In The Magical Stranger, Stephen Rodrick explores the life and death of the man who indelibly shaped his life, even as he remained a mystery: brilliant but unknowable, sacred but absent—an apparition gone 200 days of the year for much of his young son's life—a born leader who gave his son little direction. Through adolescence and into adulthood, Rodrick struggled to grasp fully the reality of his father's death and its permanence. Peter's picture and memory haunted the family home, but his name was rarely mentioned.To better understand his father and his own experience growing up without him, Rodrick turned to today's members of his father's former squadron, spending nearly two years with VAQ-135, the "World-Famous Black Ravens." His travels take him around the world, from Okinawa and Hawaii to Bahrain and the Persian Gulf—but always back to Whidbey Island, the setting of his family's own story. As he learns more about his father, he also uncovers the layers of these sailors' lives: their brides and girlfriends, friendships, dreams, disappointments—and the consequences of their choices on those they leave behind.A penetrating, thoughtful blend of memoir and reportage, The Magical Stranger is a moving reflection on the meaning of service and the power of a father's legacy.
The Magical Stranger: A Son's Journey into His Father's Life
by Stephen RodrickThe Magical Stranger is a moving story of love and sacrifice, fathers and sons, heroism and duty, soldiers and the families they leave behind.On November 28, 1979, squadron commander and Navy pilot Peter Rodrick died when his plane crashed in the Indian Ocean, leaving behind a devastated wife, two daughters, and a 13-year-old son.In this powerful, beautifully written book, journalist Stephen Rodrick explores the life and death of the man who indelibly shaped his life, even as he remained a mystery. Through adolescence and into adulthood, Stephen Rodrick struggled to fully grasp the reality of his father’s death and its permanence.To better understand his father, Rodrick turned to members of his father’s former squadron, the "World-Famous Black Ravens." As he learns about his father, he uncovers the layers of these sailors’ lives: their loves, friendships, dreams, disappointments—and the consequences of their choices on those they leave behind. The journey doesn’t end until November 28, 2013, when Rodrick’s first son is born 34 years to the day after his father’s mishap.A penetrating, thoughtful blend of memoir and reportage, The Magical Stranger is a moving reflection on the meaning of military service and the power of a father’s legacy.
Magical Realism for Non-Believers: A Memoir of Finding Family
by Anika FajardoA young woman from Minnesota searches out the Colombian father she’s never known in this powerful exploration of what family really means He loved Colombia too much to leave it. The explanation from her Minnesotan mother was enough to satisfy a child’s curiosity about her missing father. But at twenty-one, Anika Fajardo wanted more. She wanted to know her father better and to know what kind of country could have such a hold on him. And so, in 1995, Fajardo boarded a plane and flew to Colombia to discover a birthplace that was foreign to her and a father who was a stranger. There she learns that sometimes, no matter how many pieces you find, fitting together a family history isn’t easy.With her tentative entry into her father’s world, Fajardo steps on a path that will take her in surprising directions, toward unsuspected secrets about her family and herself. Set against the changing backdrops of Colombia and the American Midwest, her journey carries her back to the 1970s and the beginnings of her parents’ broken marriage, and forward to the present day, where the magic and reality of love and heartache—and her own experience as a parent—await her. The way is strewn with obstacles, physical and metaphysical—from the perils encountered on a mountain road in Colombia to the death of a loved one to the birth of her own child—but the toughest to negotiate are the shifting place of memory and truth while coming to understand her place in her family and in the world.Vivid and heartfelt in the telling, Fajardo’s story is powerfully compelling in its bridging of time and place and in its moving depiction of self-transformation. Family, she comes to find, is where you find it and what you make of it.
Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders
by Vanessa Angélica VillarrealA brilliant, singular collection of essays that looks to music, fantasy, and pop culture—from Beyoncé to Game of Thrones—to excavate and reimagine what has been disappeared by migration and colonialism. Upon becoming a new mother, Vanessa Angélica Villarreal was called to Mexico to reconnect with her ancestors and recover her grandmother&’s story, only to return to the sudden loss of her marriage, home, and reality. In Magical/Realism, Villarreal crosses into the erasure of memory and self, fragmented by migration, borders, and colonial and intimate violence, reconstructing her story with pieces of American pop culture, and the music, video games, and fantasy that have helped her make sense of it all. The border between the real and imagined is a speculative space where we can remember, or re-world, what has been lost—and each chapter engages in this essential project of world-building. In one essay, Villarreal examines her own gender performativity through Nirvana and Selena; in another, she offers a radical but crucial racial reading of Jon Snow in Game of Thrones; and throughout the collection, she explores how fantasy can help us interpret and heal when grief feels insurmountable. She reflects on the moments of her life that are too painful to remember—her difficult adolescence, her role as the eldest daughter of Mexican immigrants, her divorce—and finds a way to archive her history and map her future(s) with the hope and joy of fantasy and magical thinking. Magical/Realism is a wise, tender, and essential collection that carves a path toward a new way of remembering and telling our stories—broadening our understanding of what memoir and cultural criticism can be.
The Magical Play of Illusion: The Autobiography Of Trijang Rinpoche
by Trijang Rinpoche His Holiness the Dalai Lama Sharpa Tulku TrinleyThe Dalai Lama’s teacher's autobiography offers glimpses into the young Dalai Lama's spiritual upbringing and his escape from Tibet.Trijang Rinpoche was born to an aristocratic Tibetan family in 1901 and quickly recognized as the reincarnation of a very important high lama. Eventually appointed a mentor to the young Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Trijang became one of his most trusted confidants. His status gave him a front-row seat to many of the momentous historical events that befell Tibet. Rinpoche observes the workings of Tibetan high society and politics with an unvarnished frankness, including inside details of encounters between the Dalai Lama and Mao Tse Tung, Jawarlal Nehru, Pope John Paul II, and Indira Gandhi. Most widely known as a yogi with deep and profound, lifelong religious training, Trijang was also a statesman, a preserver of culture, a poet, writer, and artist. His autobiography is a beautifully written tour-de-force account of Tibetan life in the twentieth century, including intimate details about the upbringing of the Dalai Lama.
The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam
by Ann Marie FlemingA full-color graphic memoir inspired by the award-winning documentary-and the life and mystery of China's greatest magician. Who was Long Tack Sam? He was born in 1885. He ran away from Shangdung Province to join the circus. He was an acrobat. A magician. A comic. An impresario. A restaurateur. A theater owner. A world traveler. An East-West ambassador. A mentor to Orson Welles. He was considered the greatest act in the history of vaudeville. In this gorgeous graphic memoir, his great-granddaughter, the artist and filmmaker Ann Marie Fleming, resurrects his fascinating life for the rest of the world. It's an exhilarating testament to a forgotten man. And every picture is true.Watch a QuickTime trailer for this book.
The Magical Language of Others: A Memoir
by E. J. KohA tale of deep bonds to family, place, language—of hard-won selfhood told by a singular, incandescent voice. The Magical Language of Others is a powerful and aching love story in letters, from mother to daughter. After living in America for over a decade, Eun Ji Koh’s parents return to South Korea for work, leaving fifteen-year-old Eun Ji and her brother behind in California. Overnight, Eun Ji finds herself abandoned and adrift in a world made strange by her mother’s absence. Her mother writes letters, in Korean, over the years seeking forgiveness and love—letters Eun Ji cannot fully understand until she finds them years later hidden in a box. As Eun Ji translates the letters, she looks to history—her grandmother Jun’s years as a lovesick wife in Daejeon, the horrors her grandmother Kumiko witnessed during the Jeju Island Massacre—and to poetry, as well as her own lived experience to answer questions inside all of us. Where do the stories of our mothers and grandmothers end and ours begin? How do we find words—in Korean, Japanese, English, or any language—to articulate the profound ways that distance can shape love? Eun Ji Koh fearlessly grapples with forgiveness, reconciliation, legacy, and intergenerational trauma, arriving at insights that are essential reading for anyone who has ever had to balance love, longing, heartbreak, and joy. The Magical Language of Others weaves a profound tale of hard-won selfhood and our deep bonds to family, place, and language, introducing—in Eun Ji Koh—a singular, incandescent voice.
Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment
by Katrina Kenison"No longer indispensable, no longer assured of our old carefully crafted identities, no longer beautiful in the way we were at twenty or thirty or forty, we are hungry and searching nonetheless." From the author of The Gift of an Ordinary Day, this intimate memoir of loss, self-discovery, and growth will resonate deeply with any woman who has ever mourned the passage of time, questioned her own purpose, or wondered, "Do I have what it takes to create something new in my life?" With the candor and warmth that have endeared her to readers, Kenison reflects on the inevitable changes wrought by time: the death of a dear friend, children leaving home, recognition of her own physical vulnerability, and surprising shifts in her marriage. She finds solace in the notion that midlife is also a time of unprecedented opportunity for growth as old roles and responsibilities fall away, and unanticipated possibilities appear on the horizon. More a spiritual journey than a physical one, Kenison's beautifully crafted exploration begins and ends with a home, a life, a marriage. But this metamorphosis proves as demanding as any trek or pilgrimage to distant lands-it will guide and inspire every woman who finds herself asking "What now?"
Magical Habits (Writing Matters!)
by Monica HuertaIn Magical Habits Monica Huerta draws on her experiences growing up in her family's Mexican restaurants and her life as a scholar of literature and culture to meditate on how relationships among self, place, race, and storytelling contend with both the afterlives of history and racial capitalism. Whether dwelling on mundane aspects of everyday life, such as the smell of old kitchen grease, or grappling with the thorny, unsatisfying question of authenticity, Huerta stages a dynamic conversation among genres, voices, and archives: personal and critical essays exist alongside a fairy tale; photographs and restaurant menus complement fictional monologues based on her family's history. Developing a new mode of criticism through storytelling, Huerta takes readers through Cook County courtrooms, the Cristero Rebellion (in which her great-grandfather was martyred by the Mexican government), Japanese baths in San Francisco—and a little bit about Chaucer too. Ultimately, Huerta sketches out habits of living while thinking that allow us to consider what it means to live with and try to peer beyond history even as we are caught up in the middle of it.Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book Award recipient
The Magic Years: Scenes from a Rock-and-Roll Life
by Jonathan TaplinJonathan Taplin’s extraordinary journey has put him at the crest of every major cultural wave in the past half century: he was tour manager for Bob Dylan and The Band in the 60s, producer of major films in the 70s, an executive at Merrill Lynch in the 80s, creator of the Internet’s first Video-on-Demand service in the 90s, and a cultural critic and author writing about technology in the new millennium. His is a lifetime marked not only by good timing but by impeccable instincts—from the folk scene of Woodstock, to Hollywood’s rebellious film movement and beyond, Taplin is not just a witness but a lifelong producer, the right-hand man to some of the greatest talents of both pop culture and the underground. With cameos by Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Martin Scorsese, and countless other icons, The Magic Years is both a rock memoir and a work of cultural criticism from a key player who watched a nation turn from idealism to nihilism. Taplin offers a clear-eyed roadmap of how we got here and makes a convincing case for art’s power to deliver us from &“passionless detachment&” and rekindle our humanism.
The Magic World of Orson Welles
by James NaremoreProdigy. Iconoclast. Genius. Exile. Orson Welles remains one of the most discussed figures in cinematic history. In the centenary year of Welles's birth, James Naremore presents a revised third edition of this incomparable study, including a new section on the unfinished film The Other Side of the Wind . Naremore analyzes the political and psychological implications of the films, Welles's idiosyncratic style, and the biographical details--both playful and vexing--that impacted each work. Itself a historic film study, The Magic World of Orson Welles unlocks the soaring art and quixotic methods of a master.
Magic Trash: A Story of Tyree Guyton and His Art
by J. H. ShapiroVacant lots. Abandoned houses. Trash--lots of trash. Heidelberg Street was in trouble!Tyree Guyton loved his childhood home--that's where his grandpa Sam taught him to "paint the world." So he wanted to wake people up... to make them see Detroit's crumbling communities.Paintbrush in hand, Tyree cast his artistic spell, transforming everyday junk into magic trash. Soon local kids and families joined Tyree in rebuilding their neighborhood, discovering the healing power of art along the way.This picture book biography of Tyree Guyton, an urban environmental artist, shows how he transformed his decaying, crime-ridden neighborhood into the Heidelberg Project, an interactive sculpture park. The story spans from Tyree's childhood in 1950s Detroit to his early efforts to heal his community through art in the 1980s. Tyree's awards include Michigan Artist of the Year and International Artist.MAGIC TRASH offers strong themes of working together, the power of art, and the importance of inspiring community--especially kids--to affect action. The Heidelberg Project is internationally recognized for providing arts education to children and adults and for the ongoing development of several houses on Heidelberg Street. Not only does the Heidelberg Project prove that when a community works together it can rebuild itself, but it also addresses the issues of recycling, environmentalism, and community on a global level.
Magic Season: A Son's Story
by Wade Rouse"Honest, authentic, heartbreaking and healing. I devoured it in one day."—Jenny Lawson, #1 New York Times bestselling author Bestselling author Wade Rouse finds solace with his dying father through their shared love of baseball in this poignant, illuminating memoir of family and forgiveness.Before his success in public relations, his loving marriage and his storied writing career, Wade Rouse was simply Ted Rouse's son. A queer kid in a conservative Ozarks community, Wade struggled at a young age to garner his father's approval and find his voice. For his part, Ted was a hard-lined engineer, offering little emotional support or encouragement. But Wade and Ted had one thing in common: an undying love of the St. Louis Cardinals.For decades, baseball offered Wade and his father a shared vocabulary—a way to stay in touch, to connect and to express their emotions. But when his father's health takes a turn for the worst, Wade returns to southwest Missouri to share one final season with his father. As the Cards race towards a dramatic pennant race, Wade and his father begin to open up in way they never thought possible. Together, inning by inning during their own magic season, they'll move towards forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace.Heartfelt, hilarious and lovingly rendered, Magic Season is an unforgettable story of love, family and forgiveness against the backdrop of America's favorite pastime.
Magic Pill: The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight-Loss Drugs
by Johann HariThe bestselling author of Lost Connections and Stolen Focus offers a revelatory look at the new drugs transforming weight loss as we know it—from his personal experience on Ozempic to our ability to heal our society&’s dysfunctional relationship with food, weight, and our bodies.In January 2023, Johann Hari started to inject himself once a week with Ozempic, one of the new drugs that produces significant weight loss. He wasn&’t alone—some predictions suggest that in a few years, a quarter of the U.S. population will be taking these drugs. While around 80 percent of diets fail, someone taking one of the new drugs will lose up to a quarter of their body weight in six months. To the drugs&’ defenders, here is a moment of liberation from a condition that massively increases your chances of diabetes, cancer, and an early death. Still, Hari was wildly conflicted. Can these drugs really be as good as they sound? Are they a magic solution—or a magic trick? Finding the answer to this high-stakes question led him on a journey from Iceland to Minneapolis to Tokyo, and to interview the leading experts in the world on these questions. He found that along with the drug&’s massive benefits come twelve significant potential risks. He also found that these drugs radically challenge what we think we know about shame, willpower, and healing. What do they reveal about the nature of obesity itself? What psychological issues begin to emerge when our eating patterns are suddenly disrupted? Are the drugs a liberation or a further symptom of our deeply dysfunctional relationship with food? These drugs are about to change our world, for better and for worse. Everybody needs to understand how they work—scientifically, emotionally, and culturally. Magic Pill is an essential guide to the revolution that has already begun, and which one leading expert argues will be as transformative as the invention of the smartphone.
The Magic of Terry Pratchett
by Marc BurrowsAn in-depth look into the life and writings of the bestselling author of the Discworld novels, Good Omens, and Nation.The Magic of Terry Pratchett is the first full biography of Sir Terry Pratchett ever written. Sir Terry was Britain’s bestselling living author*, and before his death in 2015 had sold more than 85 million copies of his books worldwide. Best known for the Discworld series, his work has been translated into thirty-seven languages, and performed as plays on every continent in the world, including Antarctica.Journalist, comedian and Pratchett fan Marc Burrows delves into the back story of one of UK’s most enduring and beloved authors, from his childhood in the Chiltern Hills, to his time as a journalist, and the journey that would take him—via more than sixty best-selling books—to an OBE, a knighthood and national treasure status.The Magic Of Terry Pratchett is the result of painstaking archival research alongside interviews with friends and contemporaries who knew the real man under the famous black hat, helping to piece together the full story of one of British literature’s most remarkable and beloved figures for the very first time.* Now disqualified on both counts.Praise for The Magic of Terry Pratchett"In this encompassing biography of the prolific fantasy and science-fiction author, writer and comedian Burrows details both the writing accomplishments and the personal life of Sir Terry Pratchett. . . . Burrows spoke to friends and family, and this biography has moments of sadness, especially when discussing Pratchett’s fight with Alzheimer’s. But the book is also funny and conversational in tone, and an excellent tribute to a beloved author.” —Booklist“Affable and consistently engaging . . . Burrow’s buoyant, pun-peppered, and aptly footnote-flecked style . . . helpfully marries his subject matter, propelling us through decade after decade of a heavily writing-centric life while illuminating Pratchett’s complexities and contradictions without any drag in the tempo.” —Locus Magazine“An impressively comprehensive, engagingly written biography. ****”—SFX
The Magic of Provence
by Yvone LenardLenard recounts daily adventures with neighbors and local royalty, tells of the adventures of others who have been drawn to the region (including Vincent van Gogh and Brigitte Bardot), and offers recipes for food and drinks along with hints for entertaining. The author was formerly head of the foreign language department at California State University at Dominguex Hills. The book is not indexed. Annotation c. Book News, Inc. , Portland, OR (booknews. com)
The Magic of Beverly Sills
by Nancy GuyWith her superb coloratura soprano, passion for the world of opera, and down-to-earth personality, Beverly Sills made high art accessible to millions from the time of her meteoric rise to stardom in 1966 until her death in 2007. An unlikely pop culture phenomenon, Sills was equally at ease on talk shows, on the stage, and in the role of arts advocate and administrator. Merging archival research with her own love of Sills's music, Nancy Guy examines the singer-actress's artistry alongside the ineffable aspects of performance that earned Sills a passionate fandom. Guy mines the memories of colleagues, critics, and aficionados to recover something of the spell Sills wove for people on both sides of the footlights during the hot moments of onstage performance. At the same time, she analyzes essential questions raised by Sills's art and celebrity. How did Sills challenge the divide between elite and mass culture and build a fan base that crossed generations and socio-economic lines? Above all, how did Sills capture the unnameable magic that joins the members of an audience to a performer--and to one-another? Intimate and revealing, The Magic of Beverly Sills explores the alchemy of art, magnetism, community, and emotion that produced an American icon.
The Magic Lantern: An Autobiography
by Ingmar BergmanThe Magic Lantern: An Autobiography by Ingmar Bergman. Bearing all the narrative trademarks of a Bergman film, his autobiography unfolds not in strict chronology, but as a series of flashbacks to his childhood of bitter unhappiness: "our family", he writes "were men and women with a catastrophic heritage of excessive demands, bad conscience, and guilt". Translated by Joan Tate.
Magic Is Dead: My Journey into the World's Most Secretive Society of Magicians
by Ian FrischIn the vein of Neil Strauss’ The Game and Joshua Foer’s Moonwalking with Einstein comes the fascinating story of one man’s colorful, mysterious, and personal journey into the world of magic, and his unlikely invitation into an underground secret society of revolutionary magicians from around the world.Magic Is Dead is Ian Frisch’s head-first dive into a hidden world full of extraordinary characters and highly guarded secrets. It is a story of imagination, deception, and art that spotlights today’s most brilliant young magicians—a mysterious club known as the52, who are revolutionizing an ancient artform under the mantra Magic Is Dead.Ian brings us with him as he not only gets to know this fascinating world, but also becomes an integral part of it. We meet the52’s founding members—Laura London, Daniel Madison, and Chris Ramsay—and explore their personal demons, professional aspirations, and what drew them to their craft. We join them at private gatherings of the most extraordinary magicians working today, follow them to magic conventions in Las Vegas and England, and discover some of the best tricks of the trade. We also encounter David Blaine; hang out with Penn Jillette; meet Dynamo, the U.K.’s most famous magician; and go behind the scenes of a Netflix magic show. Magic Is Dead is also a chronicle of magic’s rich history and how it has changed in the internet age, as the young guns embrace social media and move away from the old-school take on the craft.As he tells the story of the52, and his role as its most unlikely member, Ian reveals his own connection with trickery and deceit and how he first learned the elements that make magic work from his poker-playing mother. He recalls their adventures in card rooms and casinos after his father’s sudden death, and shares a touching moment that he had, as a working journalist, with his childhood idol Shaquille O’Neal. “Magic—the romanticism of the inexplicable, the awe and admiration of the unexpected—is an underlying force in how we view the world and its myriad possibilities,” Ian writes. As his journey continues, Ian not only becomes a performer and creator of magic—even fooling the late Anthony Bourdain during a chance encounter—he also cements a new brotherhood, and begins to understand his relationship with his father, fifteen years after his death. Written with psychological acuity and a keen eye for detail, Magic Is Dead is an engrossing tale full of wonder and surprise.
Magic City: Trials of a Native Son
by Peter Bailey Trick Daddy"A thug is someone who stands on his own. He lives by the decisions he makes and accepts the consequences. A thug is comfortable in his own skin. I wear mine like a glove." Trick Daddy was born a thug--just a stone's throw from downtown Miami, yet a world away from its dazzling beauty and sparkling wealth. Where grinding poverty, deadly crime, and devastating racial tension taught kids to live by the 'hood rules. Remarkably, Trick came from nothing and made it big just when his chances had run out. Magic City is the extraordinary tale of a boy whose father was a pimp, who learned to hustle to survive, and whose only role model was his brother, the drug dealer he watched plying his trade on the block. It's the untold truth behind the cult movie Scarface, of the drug money that transformed the city into a shining mecca for the rich and famous while turf wars between smalltime pushers claimed countless lives. It's also the incredible story of how that potent mixture of extremes--the electric pulse and glittering abundance of South Beach and the crime, corruption, and despair in its shadows--gave rise to the most dominant sound in hip-hop today. Magic City is an ode to Miami, a riveting tale of a paradise lost and a native son determined to infuse it with new life.
The Magic Castle: A Mother's Harrowing True Story of Her Adoptive Son's Multiple Personalities and the Triumph of Healing
by Carole Smith"This is a true account of my experiences in successfully raising a child who suffered from multiple personality disorder. In writing the book, I have made extensive use of notes I took during therapy sessions and directly after encounters with alters, mental health personnel, a child placement organization, and the office of the district attorney. Occasionally, I have combined several similar events to avoid repetition. I was not present at the original incidents but I did observe many revivifications of the actual events. My belief in the truth of the personalities' revelations is based upon physical and circumstantial evidence and also occasional verification from witnesses. All of my encounters with the alters, including revivifications, have been accurately depicted and have not been exaggerated in any way. Many names, locations, and identifying details, including those of my family, have been changed or modified. The only names used in this book that have not been altered are those of Bill Conti, Dr. Steven J. Kingsbury, Dr. Nina Fish-Murray, Marie Párente, and Dr. Van der Kolk. The names of places and institutions that have not been changed are Boston Children's Hospital; Camp Wedicko; County District Attorneys Office; Massachusetts Department of Social Services; Massachusetts Mental Health Center; Mount Auburn Hospital; Northboro, Massachusetts; Robert F. Kennedy Residential School; and University of Massachusetts Acute Adolescent Psychiatric Unit at Westboro. As a final note, when he was thirteen years old, my son wanted to sever all connections to the perpetrators and asked to have his first, middle, and last names changed. I gave him an old family name of mine, my husband's middle name, and, of course, our last name. It is important that the reader know of these changes. However, throughout this book I have simply called him Alex."
Magic Carpet Flying: The Ride of Your Life
by Pamela RyanMagic Carpet Flying traces psychologist Pamela Ryan’s journey through her life’s adventures, from the rapture of achievement to the personal anguish of loss. Drawing on childhood lessons in rural Australia and later work in the Australian outback, Africa, Asia, and other parts of the world where she travelled to help others tackle the darkness of mental illness, suicide, and large-scale tragedy arising from terrorist attacks and natural disasters, Ryan reveals how she not only survived trauma but turned her journey into a "magic carpet ride." Exploring what it is to "live truth," to "make ourselves up as we go along," to aim for the stars, and to become the "pilot in command" of our own destiny, Pamela Ryan’s unforgettable journey in Magic Carpet Flying reveals what it means to be fully alive.
The Magic Border: Poetry and Fragments from My Soft Machine
by Arlo ParksFrom Arlo Parks, Grammy Award-nominated recording artist and “voice of a generation”—a stunning debut book of poetry and a world-building companion to her sophomore album My Soft Machine.“Poetry was my place, my little clearing in the forest, where I could quietly put everything I was holding. I’m not sure what gave me the courage to open up that space to you but here I am, doing it. I am proud to show you this personal lens that life shimmers through. This book is no longer mine. It is yours.”—Arlo ParksThe Magic Border is the debut book from the Grammy-nominated, Mercury Prize winning musician and poet Arlo Parks. This remarkable collection features Arlo’s handpicked original poems alongside exclusive photographs by friend and collaborator Daniyel Lowden in addition to the complete lyrics to her critically lauded sophomore album My Soft Machine. A deeply personal literary tapestry, The Magic Border beautifully showcases the full breadth of Arlo’s singular artistry.
The Magic Behind the Voices: A Who's Who of Cartoon Voice Actors
by Tim Lawson Alisa PersonsThe Magic Behind the Voices is a fascinating package of biographies, anecdotes, credit listings, and photographs of the actors who have created the unmistakable voices for some of the most popular and enduring animated characters of all time. Drawn from dozens of personal interviews, the book features a unique look at thirty-nine of the hidden artists of show business. Often as amusing as the characters they portray, voice actors are charming, resilient people—many from humble beginnings—who have led colorful lives in pursuit of success. Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill's Mike Judge was an engineer for a weapons contractor turned self-taught animator and voice actor. Nancy Cartwright (the voice of Bart Simpson) was a small-town Ohio girl who became the star protégé of Daws Butler—most famous for Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, and Quick Draw McGraw. Mickey Mouse (Wayne Allwine) and Minnie Mouse (Russi Taylor) were a real-life husband-and-wife team. Spanning many studios and production companies, this book captures the spirit of fun that bubbles from those who create the voices of favorite animated characters. In the earliest days of cartoons, voice actors were seldom credited for their work. A little more than a decade ago, even the Screen Actors Guild did not consider voice actors to be real actors, and the only voice actor known to the general public was Mel Blanc. Now, Oscar-winning celebrities clamor to guest star on animated television shows and features. Despite the crushing turnouts at signings for shows such as Animaniacs, The Simpsons, and SpongeBob Squarepants, most voice actors continue to work in relative anonymity. The Magic Behind the Voices features personal interviews and concise biographical details, parting the curtain to reveal creators of many of the most beloved cartoon voices.