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 Mechanics Clash! Sorcerers and wizards truck with demons while tinkers and engineers build mighty engines of battle in this sourcebook for Dungeons and DragonsR WarcraftR the Roleplaying Game, which translates the hugely successful Warcraft computer game series into an exciting pen-and-paper roleplaying game world based on the popular d20 System rules! Requires the use of the Dungeons and DragonsR Player's Handbook, published by Wizards of the CoastR. This product utilizes updated material from the v.3.5 revision Designed with extensive input from the creative minds behind the Warcraft computer games, Magic and Mayhem includes: * In depth discussion of magic in the Warcraft setting, including rules for arcane corruption and a new type of magic called rune magic. * The new runemaster core class; 8 new prestige classes, including the warden and the steamwarrior; and several new feats. * New spells, as well as full descriptions of the new rune families and runes used by the runemaster. * A horde of new magic items and technological devices, as well as expanded details on creating technological devices. * Statistics for Warcraft constructs-the ultimate in the merging of magic and technology!

A famous fiddler has been kilt. A magic garden's left to wilt. Does Fiona Knox's father hold the guilt? Will florist Fiona's blood be spilt? World-famous fiddle player Barley McFee arrives in blustery Bellewick, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, for a grand homecoming concert organized by jeweler Bernice Brennan. Fiona Knox, owner of the Climbing Rose Flower Shop, is starting to regret volunteering to help with the concert. Bernice is an exacting taskmaster, and Fiona has enough tension dealing with her parents, who have traveled from Tennessee to visit Fi and her younger sister, Isla, and to reveal a secret about Fi's birth. But when Barley is found dead in his trailer during the concert's intermission, and his death is shockingly tied to Fiona's father, Fiona discovers there are more secrets surrounding her family than she realized. Much to the chagrin of handsome Neil Craig, Chief Inspector of the County Aberdeen Police, Fiona delves into the case to clear her father's name. To make matters worse, Fiona learns that Duncreigan, the magical garden that she inherited from her godfather, is dying. At some point during the concert, someone broke into the garden and cut the centuries-old climbing rose--the source of the garden's magic--from the standing stone. The stakes are higher than ever and Fiona could lose all that she's grown unless she's able to dispel this terrible curse and dig up the truth--fast.

Private detective, Adrian Elias, knows what trouble looks like, and ruthless mobster and lion shifter, Sage Tamir, was just that with a capital T. On top of smelling like heaven, the man has the face of an angel, with a body made for unbridled sin. A combination Adrian finds very hard to resist. Unfortunately, someone is trying to kill Sage and they're using magic to do it. Sage usually takes these types of matters into his own hands, but this time, he's out of his league. He believes the only person who can help him is the down-on-his-luck detective. Problem is, Adrian doesn't want to take his case because he feels it may be too dangerous. Never mind the volcanic-level attraction they seem to share for each other raising the stakes. Magic and mayhem awaits.Reader Advisory: 18 and older. Strong adult situations and language. A sarcastic PI and a no-nonsense mobster will keep you turning the pages way past your bedtime. Best order that pizza, because once you start this book, you won't want to stop.

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.

A sexy and lighthearted Halloween anthology featuring intertwined short stories from two New York Times–bestselling romance authors! Magic by Cathryn Fox: Good witch Brianna James 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! But she has no idea that she’s about to experience a passion so intense it will forever turn her good girl days into bad girl nights. And when that spell lands in the wrong hands, be prepared for a little mayhem . . . Mayhem by Sylvia Day: 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 Lost Boys meets Wilder Girls in this supernatural feminist YA novel. It's 1987 and unfortunately it's not all Madonna and cherry lip balm. Mayhem Brayburn has always known there was something off about her and her mother, Roxy. Maybe it has to do with Roxy's constant physical pain, or maybe with Mayhem's own irresistible pull to water. Either way, she knows they aren't like everyone else. But when May's stepfather finally goes too far, Roxy and Mayhem flee to Santa Maria, California, the coastal beach town that holds the answers to all of Mayhem's questions about who her mother is, her estranged family, and the mysteries of her own self. There she meets the kids who live with her aunt, and it opens the door to the magic that runs through the female lineage in her family, the very magic Mayhem is next in line to inherit and which will change her life for good. But when she gets wrapped up in the search for the man who has been kidnapping girls from the beach, her life takes another dangerous turn and she is forced to face the price of vigilante justice and to ask herself whether revenge is worth the cost. From the acclaimed author of This Raging Light and But Then I Came Back, Estelle Laure offers a riveting and complex story with magical elements about a family of women contending with what appears to be an irreversible destiny, taking control and saying when enough is enough.