Forty short stories and essays have been selected as representative of the Argentine writer's metaphysical narratives.

Grow your cache of quilter's tricks with 5 awe-inspiring patchwork techniques that are easier than they appear. Learn a new piecing trick in just 15 minutes or less, and watch your skills soar to a whole new level. Say "presto!" with partial seams for both quilts and blocks, Y-seams, mini improv piecing, and free-form curves. Victoria Findlay Wolfe shares 17 projects, including the eye-fooling Herringbone and LeMoyne Star quilt patterns, plus full-size templates and 6 quilt coloring pages to help you work your own quilt magic.

Offers tips and techniques for rotary cutting, accurate piecing, pressing, and finishing and includes step-by-step directions for twelve projects

Molecular Dynamics is a two-volume compendium of the ever-growing applications of molecular dynamics simulations to solve a wider range of scientific and engineering challenges. The contents illustrate the rapid progress on molecular dynamics simulations in many fields of science and technology, such as nanotechnology, energy research, and biology, due to the advances of new dynamics theories and the extraordinary power of today's computers. This first book begins with a general description of underlying theories of molecular dynamics simulations and provides extensive coverage of molecular dynamics simulations in nanotechnology and energy. Coverage of this book includes: Recent advances of molecular dynamics theory Formation and evolution of nanoparticles of up to 106 atoms Diffusion and dissociation of gas and liquid molecules on silicon, metal, or metal organic frameworks Conductivity of ionic species in solid oxides Ion solvation in liquid mixtures Nuclear structures

Our foremost theorist of myth, fairytales, and folktales explores the magical realm of the imagination where carpets fly, objects speak, dreams reveal hidden truths, and genies grant prophetic wishes. Stranger Magic examines the wondrous tales of the Arabian Nights, their profound impact on the West, and the progressive exoticization of magic since the eighteenth century, when the first European translations appeared. The Nights seized European readers' imaginations during the siècle des Lumières, inspiring imitations, spoofs, turqueries, extravaganzas, pantomimes, and mauresque tastes in dress and furniture. Writers from Voltaire to Goethe to Borges, filmmakers from Raoul Walsh on, and countless authors of children's books have adapted its stories. What gives these tales their enduring power to bring pleasure to readers and audiences? Their appeal, Marina Warner suggests, lies in how the stories' magic stimulates the creative activity of the imagination. Their popularity during the Enlightenment was no accident: dreams, projections, and fantasies are essential to making the leap beyond the frontiers of accepted knowledge into new scientific and literary spheres. The magical tradition, so long disavowed by Western rationality, underlies modernity's most characteristic developments, including the charmed states of brand-name luxury goods, paper money, and psychoanalytic dream interpretation. In Warner's hands, the Nights reveal the underappreciated cultural exchanges between East and West, Islam and Christianity, and cast light on the magical underpinnings of contemporary experience, where mythical principles, as distinct from religious belief, enjoy growing acceptance. These tales meet the need for enchantment, in the safe guise of oriental costume.

A comprehensive study of Jewish magic in the late antiquity and the early Islamic period—the phenomenon, the sources, and method for its research, and the history of scholarly investigation into its nature and origin. "Magic culture is certainly fascinating. But what is it? What, in fact, are magic writings, magic artifacts?" Originally published in Hebrew in 2010, Jewish Magic Before the Rise of Kabbalah is a comprehensive study of early Jewish magic focusing on three major topics: Jewish magic inventiveness, the conflict with the culture it reflects, and the scientific study of both. The first part of the book analyzes the essence of magic in general and Jewish magic in particular. The book begins with theories addressing the relationship of magic and religion in fields like comparative study of religion, sociology of religion, history, and cultural anthropology, and considers the implications of the paradigm shift in the interdisciplinary understanding of magic for the study of Jewish magic. The second part of the book focuses on Jewish magic culture in late antiquity and in the early Islamic period. This section highlights the artifacts left behind by the magic practitioners—amulets, bowls, precious stones, and human skulls—as well as manuals that include hundreds of recipes. Jewish Magic before the Rise of Kabbalah also reports on the culture that is reflected in the magic evidence from the perspective of external non-magic contemporary Jewish sources. Issues of magic and religion, magical mysticism, and magic and social power are dealt with in length in this thorough investigation. Scholars interested in early Jewish history and comparative religions will find great value in this text.