James L Clark – författare

The beginner''s guide to mental magic

No rabbits. No wands. Just dozens of first-rate effects, illusions, and tricks guaranteed to amaze. Mind Magic & Mentalism For Dummies pulls back the curtain and introduces the secret world of mentalism for the first time.

With this book and the included DVD, budding practitioners have everything they need to master some of the most astounding illusions imaginable from exercising psychic powers and reading minds to harnessing mental energy to control fire and bend metal from across the stage.

Each effect in the book is presented from three perspectives: what the audience sees, how the trick is performed, and how to present it in a way that thrills spectators, making it the comprehensive, essential guide to blowing your audience away. The DVD includes performances of many of the effects outlined in the book to help readers put the information into action Provides both introductory-level lessons on the art of performing and a host of great effects that will meet the needs of beginners

Mind Magic & Mentalism For Dummies is the essential introduction to this mysterious art that can seemingly provide readers with the powers of clairvoyance, mind control, divination, and precognition.

Note - CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of the e-book file, but are available for download after purchase.

The poems in this collection have to do with the passing of time-its relentlessness, speed and events-and people facing sadness, humor, joy, social upheavals such as wars, inequities, corruption, goodness, apprehensions about life and death, love, hatred, dreams, disappointments, fears, injustices, blessings, sacrifice, sloth, industriousness, physical impairments/strengths, spirituality, God, worry, specific battles in various wars, elation, jealousy, greed, generosity, meanness, aging-in short, the everyday happenings/abstractions that, totaled, simply make life what it is for everyone, both individually and collectively. While the book includes both free verse and traditional poetry as defined consensually, most of the poems feature rhythm and rhyme, not the sing-song type of thing, but serious and consistent style presenting subjects in a manner conducive to reading them aloud and remembering. Though this is a departure from the styles mostly in vogue today, it features form that has withstood the testing of time while demanding more of the creator, just as in the case of classical music-perhaps an interesting change of pace for the reader.

Unlike humans, Lucifer is ineligible for redemption and therefore doomed to eternal hell. Playing on God''s sense of fairness, Lucifer appeals to the Archangel Michael for a chance to redeem himself by turning a person he corrupted into a paragon of virtue. Against his own wishes, Michael makes the deal. However, since moral perfection is impossible for anyone, he decrees that Lucifer must attain redemption by seeing that his subject does not break nine of the Ten Commandments politically.

The agreement is struck and the target of Lucifer''s effort will be the corrupt, wealthy governor of Kentucky, who is gearing up for reelection and is hopelessly paranoid about his opponents. Besides engaging in the usual local corruption, the "Guv" worms his way into a deal to bring riverboat gambling to the state. Lucifer dispatches an imp disguised as a political consultant to infiltrate the campaign and influence the governor toward political righteousness. The imp and the governor''s spokeswoman share a romantic attraction, which is also resolved in this rollicking, metaphysical muckraking of Kentucky politics.

When the peccadilloes of his law-firm partner sink the business, Eddie Amos returns to the Commonwealth Attorney''s office as a prosecutor having as his chief goals the conviction-on the basis of suspected longstanding sexual-abuse of boys-of (1) the administrator of a tax-funded youth organization in the central-Kentucky city of Lexington, and (2) the city''s drug-czar/pimp. At the same time, a young attorney instigates a heretofore-unheard-of wrongful-death lawsuit, generated by a drunk driver, against a distillery, and the two lawyers work together to achieve their goals. An assassination, two murders and a possible suicide impact or result from their efforts.

Characters ranging from the most sublime to the seamiest-an Episcopal priest (Vietnam veteran), drug pushers, dope-heads, prostitutes, embezzlers, rogue cops, troubled teenagers, a greed-driven booze-maker, corporate lawyers, sexual perverts, a hit-man, sex-abuse victims, and a devout and beautiful paralegal-are caught up in the process, during the development of which Amos, the priest, a restaurateur embittered by the drunk-driver-induced death of her husband, a corporate attorney''s wife, the young lawyer and the paralegal progress through spiritual journeys and/or experience the developing of romantic attachments or profound heartbreak, but find some answers to hard questions.