House of Illusions

House of Illusions PDF Author: Pauline Gedge
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143179446
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Book Description
For many years, Thu has lived in exile, writing the tragic history of her life as the favourite concubine of Ramses III—and her role in the conspiracy to kill him. A young soldier, Kamen, has read her words and believes her testimony that she was not acting alone. When Kamen shows Thu’s manuscript to his general, he unknowingly sets in motion a stirring drama of revenge and punishment, miraculous disclosures, and unexpected vindication. House of Illusions is the stunning sequel to the bestselling House of Dreams, and brings Thu’s story to its surprising and dramatic conclusion.

House of Illusions

House of Illusions PDF Author: Pauline Gedge
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143179446
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 545

Get Book Here

Book Description
For many years, Thu has lived in exile, writing the tragic history of her life as the favourite concubine of Ramses III—and her role in the conspiracy to kill him. A young soldier, Kamen, has read her words and believes her testimony that she was not acting alone. When Kamen shows Thu’s manuscript to his general, he unknowingly sets in motion a stirring drama of revenge and punishment, miraculous disclosures, and unexpected vindication. House of Illusions is the stunning sequel to the bestselling House of Dreams, and brings Thu’s story to its surprising and dramatic conclusion.

House of Shadows and Illusion

House of Shadows and Illusion PDF Author: Renee (Burt Demrest) Snyder
Publisher: Hillcrest Publishing Group
ISBN: 0997369515
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 1

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Book Description
Renee was adopted by Walter and Frances Burt--of the notorious Burt crime family of Rhode Island--when she was just 15 months old. While the Burts are known for their crimes involving arson, welfare fraud, and assaults, Renee's own experiences are more far-ranging and horrific than any newspaper headlines suggest. Beginning at age 6, Renee faced unspeakable instances of sexual abuse, physical beatings, and constant verbal tirades of her worthlessness, all by the "good Catholic" parents who'd adopted her. From weekly nighttime visits from her father, to lacerations inflicted by her mother's power cord, Renee's childhood was filled with traumatic horrors. It was not until Renee had her own child at age 17 that she finally found something to live and to fight for. Author Renee Snyder painstakingly details every torment she faced at the hands of the Burts for a period exceeding 20 years. House of Shadows and Illusion is Renee's own story of unspeakable suffering and, ultimately, survival.

The Art of Illusion

The Art of Illusion PDF Author: Florian Heine
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 3791386794
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Discover how artists have been tricking the human eye for centuries in this gorgeous and wide-ranging exploration of the art of illusion. This spellbinding look at the history and development of illusionistic art reveals wide-ranging techniques that have piqued the public's fascination with this medium. Beautifully reproduced, the images featured in the book includes centuries-old work such as the scenery at the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, Italy, and the ceiling frescos at the Würzburg Residence in Germany, that showcase processes such as trompe l'oeil and anamorphosis. It also features work from the 20th and 21st centuries, including René Magritte's classic Surrealist works; M.C. Escher's magical and mathematically precise drawings; the seemingly undulating paintings of Bridget Riley; the manipulated photography of Andreas Gursky; Duane Hanson's eerily lifelike sculptures; JR's larger-than-life portrait photographs; and Georges Rousse's mind-bending constructions. The book also has examples of amazing street art including subway graffiti and a sidewalk painting that makes pedestrians think twice. This extraordinary and informative guide to all kinds of artistic trickery will satisfy scholars as well as everyday fans.

The Knowledge Illusion

The Knowledge Illusion PDF Author: Steven Sloman
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0399184341
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
“The Knowledge Illusion is filled with insights on how we should deal with our individual ignorance and collective wisdom.” —Steven Pinker We all think we know more than we actually do. Humans have built hugely complex societies and technologies, but most of us don’t even know how a pen or a toilet works. How have we achieved so much despite understanding so little? Cognitive scientists Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach argue that we survive and thrive despite our mental shortcomings because we live in a rich community of knowledge. The key to our intelligence lies in the people and things around us. We’re constantly drawing on information and expertise stored outside our heads: in our bodies, our environment, our possessions, and the community with which we interact—and usually we don’t even realize we’re doing it. The human mind is both brilliant and pathetic. We have mastered fire, created democratic institutions, stood on the moon, and sequenced our genome. And yet each of us is error prone, sometimes irrational, and often ignorant. The fundamentally communal nature of intelligence and knowledge explains why we often assume we know more than we really do, why political opinions and false beliefs are so hard to change, and why individual-oriented approaches to education and management frequently fail. But our collaborative minds also enable us to do amazing things. The Knowledge Illusion contends that true genius can be found in the ways we create intelligence using the community around us.

The Illusion of Conscious Will

The Illusion of Conscious Will PDF Author: Daniel M. Wegner
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262290553
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 743

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Book Description
A novel contribution to the age-old debate about free will versus determinism. Do we consciously cause our actions, or do they happen to us? Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, theologians, and lawyers have long debated the existence of free will versus determinism. In this book Daniel Wegner offers a novel understanding of the issue. Like actions, he argues, the feeling of conscious will is created by the mind and brain. Yet if psychological and neural mechanisms are responsible for all human behavior, how could we have conscious will? The feeling of conscious will, Wegner shows, helps us to appreciate and remember our authorship of the things our minds and bodies do. Yes, we feel that we consciously will our actions, Wegner says, but at the same time, our actions happen to us. Although conscious will is an illusion, it serves as a guide to understanding ourselves and to developing a sense of responsibility and morality. Approaching conscious will as a topic of psychological study, Wegner examines the issue from a variety of angles. He looks at illusions of the will—those cases where people feel that they are willing an act that they are not doing or, conversely, are not willing an act that they in fact are doing. He explores conscious will in hypnosis, Ouija board spelling, automatic writing, and facilitated communication, as well as in such phenomena as spirit possession, dissociative identity disorder, and trance channeling. The result is a book that sidesteps endless debates to focus, more fruitfully, on the impact on our lives of the illusion of conscious will.

Grand Illusion

Grand Illusion PDF Author: Gabriela Cruz
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190915056
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
A new and groundbreaking historical narrative, Grand Illusion: Phantasmagoria in Nineteenth-Century Opera explores how technical innovations in Paris transformed the grand opera into a transcendent, dream-like audio-visual spectacle.

City of Illusion

City of Illusion PDF Author: Victoria Ying
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593114523
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Read the follow-up to the action-packed adventure that Dan Santat called "An-edge-of-your-seat thriller!" It's been a peaceful three months since Hannah Morgan and Ever Barnes saved their beloved Oskars, and activated the powers of their city's Megantic. Ever now lives with the Morgan family and the two children watch over and learn more about Oskar (the Megantic) every day. But their conflict-free days come to an abrupt end when Mr. Morgan is captured while on a family trip to nearby Alexios, and the kids get into a spat with a group of street magicians who con Hannah out of her pocket money. Chifa and Tanan were never planning to make friends while performing their tricks, but when Hannah and Ever learn of their connection to Vash, they realize there's much more at stake than a few coins. If Hannah and Ever want to find out what Vash is hiding and save both Oskars and Alexios before time runs out, they'll have to learn to trust Chifa and Tanan, and most importantly, find a way to work together.

The Houses of Belgrade

The Houses of Belgrade PDF Author: Borislav Pekić
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 9780810111417
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
The Bernard Johnson translation of Pekic's prize-winning novel. Originally published by Harcourt in 1978. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Citizen Spectator

Citizen Spectator PDF Author: Wendy Bellion
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 080783890X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
In this richly illustrated study, the first book-length exploration of illusionistic art in the early United States, Wendy Bellion investigates Americans' experiences with material forms of visual deception and argues that encounters with illusory art shaped their understanding of knowledge, representation, and subjectivity between 1790 and 1825. Focusing on the work of the well-known Peale family and their Philadelphia Museum, as well as other Philadelphians, Bellion explores the range of illusions encountered in public spaces, from trompe l'oeil paintings and drawings at art exhibitions to ephemeral displays of phantasmagoria, "Invisible Ladies," and other spectacles of deception. Bellion reconstructs the elite and vernacular sites where such art and objects appeared and argues that early national exhibitions doubled as spaces of citizen formation. Within a post-Revolutionary culture troubled by the social and political consequences of deception, keen perception signified able citizenship. Setting illusions into dialogue with Enlightenment cultures of science, print, politics, and the senses, Citizen Spectator demonstrates that pictorial and optical illusions functioned to cultivate but also to confound discernment. Bellion reveals the equivocal nature of illusion during the early republic, mapping its changing forms and functions, and uncovers surprising links between early American art, culture, and citizenship.

The Last Illusion

The Last Illusion PDF Author: Porochista Khakpour
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1620403048
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
A kaleidoscopic tale inspired by a legend from the medieval Persian epic "Book of Kings" follows the coming-of-age of a feral Middle Eastern youth in New York City on the eve of the September 11 attacks. By the award-winning author of Sons and Other Flammable Objects. 25,000 first printing.