A Very Bad Wizard

In the first edition of A Very Bad Wizard: Morality Behind the Curtain – Nine Conversations, philosopher Tamler Sommers talked with an interdisciplinary group of the world’s leading researchers—from the fields of social psychology, moral philosophy, cognitive science, and primatology—all working on the same issue: the origins and workings of morality. Together, these nine interviews pulled back some of the curtain, not only on our moral lives but—through Sommers’ probing, entertaining, and well informed questions—on the way morality traditionally has been studied. This Second Edition increases the subject matter, adding eight additional interviews and offering features that will make A Very Bad Wizard more useful in undergraduate classrooms. These features include structuring all chapters around sections and themes familiar in a course in ethics or moral psychology; providing follow-up podcasts for some of the interviews, which will delve into certain issues from the conversations in a more informal manner; including an expanded and annotated reading list with relevant primary sources at the end of each interview; presenting instructor and student resources online in a companion website. The resulting new publication promises to synthesize and make accessible the latest interdisciplinary research to offer a brand new way to teach philosophical ethics and moral psychology.

The reader's choices determine the development of the story of the battle to overcome the powerful magic spells of the evil sorcerer, Warzen.

A mysterious library book opens the door to a world of magic and danger in the first book in the beloved Young Wizards series. Bullied by her classmates, Nita Callahan is miserable at school. So when she finds a mysterious book in the library that promises her the chance to become a wizard, she jumps at the opportunity to escape her unhappy reality. But taking the Wizard's Oath is no easy thing, and Nita soon finds herself paired with fellow wizard-in-training Kit Rodriguez on a dangerous mission. The only way to become a full wizard is to face the Lone Power, the being that created death and is the mortal enemy of all wizards. As Nita and Kit battle their way through a deadly alternate version of New York controlled by the Lone Power, they must rely on each other and their newfound wizarding skills to survive--and save the world from the Lone One's grasp.

Trans wizard Harriet Porber is a master spellsmith who's found herself in a bit of a pickle. After finishing wizard college, Harriet made a name for herself by creating a hit viral spell, but has since failed to craft a follow up. Now Harriet's agent, Minerma, is breathing down her neck, suggesting that Harriet take a trip to an island off the coast of England for inspiration. Hoping for some peace and quiet to clear her head, Harriet Porber arrives to find that her new neighbor, an angsty bard named Snabe from the band Seven Inch Nails, is already there making a racket. This parasaurolophus spellcaster is a bad boy through and through, and with his incredible powers of metamagic, Snabe reveals that this layer of reality is much more than it seems. Could Harriet and Snabe really be characters in a parody romance novel? Soon enough, these two are discovering they have more similarities that differences: both trans, both strong, and both hoping to create a new spell that will change the world. But with the addition of two devious sentient motorcycles to the mix, Dellatrix and Braco, things start to get complicated. Now trans wizard Harriet Porber is caught up in a tale of magic and mystery where nothing is as it seems, except for one universal truth: love is real. This is a 52,000 word bad boy romance novel for adults. It contains some explicit scenes.

Long Island’s teen wizard returns in “an unusually consistent fantasy, rich in details, subplots, and Irish lore” from the author of High Wizardry (School Library Journal). To give fifteen-year-old Nita a vacation from magic—and her partner Kit—her parents pack her off for a stay with her eccentric aunt in Ireland. But Nita soon finds herself with a host of Irish wizards battling mythical beings, wolves, and elves from a nightmare land. In Wizard Abroad, “Duane seamlessly interweaves encounters with creatures from legend with glimpses of modern Irish life and teen culture. Her view of magic’s place in the scheme of things is so clever and well reasoned that readers will have no trouble suspending belief (School Library Journal). “Exceptional.”—Science Fiction Chronicle “The series may be of particular interest to female readers as Nita and her younger sister are the focus of most of the books and they are strong female characters. If you’ve read the other Wizardry books, this fourth book in the series won’t disappoint you.”—SF Site Praise for the Young Wizards series “Duane is tops in the high adventure business . . . This rollicking yarn will delight readers.”—Publishers Weekly “High Wizardry is . . . high entertainment.”—Locus “Recommend this series to young teens who devour books about magic and wizards . . . or kids looking for ‘Harry Potter’ read-alikes.”—School Library Journal “Stands between the works of Diana Wynne Jones . . . and Madeleine L’Engle . . . An outstanding, original work.”—The Horn Book

From the best-selling, award-winning author of 1491 and 1493--an incisive portrait of the two little-known twentieth-century scientists, Norman Borlaug and William Vogt, whose diametrically opposed views shaped our ideas about the environment, laying the groundwork for how people in the twenty-first century will choose to live in tomorrow's world. In forty years, Earth's population will reach ten billion. Can our world support that? What kind of world will it be? Those answering these questions generally fall into two deeply divided groups--Wizards and Prophets, as Charles Mann calls them in this balanced, authoritative, nonpolemical new book. The Prophets, he explains, follow William Vogt, a founding environmentalist who believed that in using more than our planet has to give, our prosperity will lead us to ruin. Cut back! was his mantra. Otherwise everyone will lose! The Wizards are the heirs of Norman Borlaug, whose research, in effect, wrangled the world in service to our species to produce modern high-yield crops that then saved millions from starvation. Innovate! was Borlaug's cry. Only in that way can everyone win! Mann delves into these diverging viewpoints to assess the four great challenges humanity faces--food, water, energy, climate change--grounding each in historical context and weighing the options for the future. With our civilization on the line, the author's insightful analysis is an essential addition to the urgent conversation about how our children will fare on an increasingly crowded Earth.

While Roland the Gunslinger and his companions leap between worlds, he relates his experiences with the elusive, powerful emotion of love in a journey into his own past.

Your words and actions have tremendous power. Learn how to harness that power to change your life and make the world a better place with this modern spell book—regardless of your religion or spiritual leanings. Contemporary life is confusing and it's easy to feel out of control. In this smart, secular witchcraft manual, Sage Liskey shows you how to get in touch with the mental, emotional, and physical aspects needed for spell casting. Chapters include guidance on finding your highest form, understanding your wizarding type, controlling your magic, overcoming roadblocks to your power such as depression and trauma, finding love or your ideal career, working with magical objects, facing a crisis, and community spell work. Once you've fully tapped into your magical powers, you can use them to effect positive change in yourself and those around you.