Hans Holzer

At the age of seventy-three, New York Times bestselling author Sylvia Browne is ready to tell the whole story of her extraordinary life. In Psychic, we meet the woman behind the public figure: from the child receiving her first visits from the spirit world to the teenager doubting her own sanity; from the new mother living through staggering highs and lows to the burgeoning celebrity, and, ultimately, the successful, happily married woman she is today. Filled with never-before-told stories and otherworldly encounters, Psychic is a riveting account of how Sylvia Shoemaker, a traditional girl from Missouri, became world-famous psychic Sylvia Browne.Nothing is off-limits. Sylvia tells the little-known truths behind her three failed marriages—including physical abuse, bankruptcy, and legal troubles—and the financial and emotional damage they wreaked. She revisits her personal demons and describes her physical challenges, including her relatively recent discovery that she'd suddenly gone blind in one eye. And then there is the greatest surprise of all: Sylvia tells how, once she had reached her seventies, and believed her romantic life was over, the real Mr. Right finally—impossibly—showed up.While the press has freely, often bitterly, weighed in on Sylvia's most painful stories, she has remained quiet—until now. Unlike any other book Sylvia has written, Psychic reaches deep beneath the surface of her life, including professional and personal experiences that she is sharing publicly for the first time. With candor, warmth, and a great deal of humor, Sylvia Browne has written the singularly captivating tale of a life lived in two worlds, filled equally with harsh earthly realities and mesmerizing spiritual insights.

Matthew's Gospel reveals little about the three wealthy visitors said to have presented gifts to the infant Jesus. Yet hundreds of generations of Christians have embellished that image of the Three Kings or Magi for a myriad of social and political as well as spiritual purposes. Here Richard Trexler closely examines how this story has been interpreted and used throughout the centuries. Biblically, the Journey of the Magi presents a positive image of worldly power, depicting the faithful in progress toward their God and conveying the importance of the gift-giving laity as legitimators of their deity. With this in mind, Trexler explains in particular how Western societies have molded the story to describe and augment their own power - before the infant God and among themselves.