Magic and Mayhem - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Magic and Mayhem write by Derek Leebaert. This book was released on 2010-09-07. Magic and Mayhem available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. 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 - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Magic and Mayhem write by Sylvia Day. This book was released on 2009-10-13. Magic and Mayhem available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. 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 - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook THE FUN HOUSE write by Tom Bissinger. This book was released on 2013-11. THE FUN HOUSE available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. 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.
Dragon World
Dragon World - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Dragon World write by Tamara Macfarlane. This book was released on 2021-03-16. Dragon World available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. 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!
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 - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts write by J. W. Ocker. This book was released on 2016-10-04. A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. 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.
