The Sense of Wonder (The Trilogy of Magic) - Softcover

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Bob Neale is a teacher and writer. Throughout his career, he has exercised his imagination by making up things in the overlapping areas of religion, magic, and the arts. The results have been psychological theories about death and dying, religion as mature play, and the relations of loneliness, solitude, and companionship. An understanding of the place of magic in daily life grew out of these explorations. And the expression of it was facilitated by his creation of origami models, puzzles, and tricks that are frequently presented with social, political, and philosophical meanings. He cares about magic as imagination at play in the expression of truth through illusion. Bob is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ with degrees from Amherst College and Union Theological Seminary in New York, where he taught for twenty-four years as Professor of Psychiatry and Religion. His publications during that time include In Praise of Play (1969), The Art of Dying (1973), and Loneliness, Solitude, and Companionship: New Dimensions in Relationship (1984). Bob is an internationally exhibited and published creator of origami models. In 1964, he delighted many paperfolders and magicians with his “Bunny Bill.” In 2009, his impossible object “The Impossi-Bill Braid” gave instruction on construction in both text and DVD. Between these years, he has published Origami, Plain and Simple (1994), Folding Money Fooling (1997), Frog Tales (2000), and Which Came First? A Collection of Magical Designs (2006). Bob’s essays on magic and tricks have appeared in many journals, pamphlets, and books. He was a monthly columnist for The Linking Ring for five years. His first book for magicians, Tricks of the Imagination (1991), was followed by Magic and Meaning, co-authored with Eugene Burger (1995, now in an expanded, second edition from 2009); Life, Death and Other Card Tricks (2000); The Magic Mirror, co-authored with David Parr (2002); Celebration of Sides: The Nonsense World of Robert Neale, with the assistance of Michael Weber (2006, DVD); This Is Not A Book (2008); Magic Matters (2009); Gift Magic: Performances that Leave People with a Souvenir, with Jeff McBride, George Parker, Lawrence Hass, Eugene Burger, and Rich Bloch (2010); 444 and Three More (2011); and Nine Uneasy Pieces (2012).