After Philip's older sister and sole family member Helen marries, he goes off to live with his new step sister Lucy. He has trouble adjusting at first, thrown into a world different from his previous life and abandoned by his sister while she is on her honeymoon. To entertain himself he builds a giant model city from things around the house: game pieces, books, blocks, bowls, etc. Then through some magic he finds himself inside the city, and it is alive with the people he has populated it with. Edith Nesbit (1858-1924) was the author of world famous books for children - the tales of fantastical adventures, journeys back in time and travel to magical worlds.

This is a children's story by one of the best authors in that genre. It tells the story of Philip who grows up with his much older half-sister. One day she marries her childhood sweetheart and moves away. Philip is devastated and builds a city from building blocks and other bits and pieces. When he plays with it all kinds of wonderful and magical characters appear.

Young Philip Haldane has been living a happy life with his beloved older sister Helen, their parents having died some years previously. But when his sister meets a childhood sweetheart—now a widower—and marries him, Philip is plunged into anger and bitter resentment. He extends this resentment to Lucy, the daughter of Helen’s new husband. Left alone while his sister goes on her honeymoon, he builds a fantastical city out of wooden blocks and household items. Shortly afterwards, he finds himself inside his imaginary city, and is tasked with carrying out a series of heroic deeds. The Magic City was published in 1910. Like Nesbit’s other children’s books, it was first serialized in The Strand magazine. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

The Magic City - Edith Nesbit - "Philip and Lucy discover that the city Philip has built using toys, books and household objects, has come alive. This is the account of their incredible adventures in those magical lands, where they meet characters from books and history, mythical beasts, and many other nice (and not so nice) people and creatures.As with all Edith Nesbits tales, The Magic City has generous helpings of humour, imagination and interesting ideas, as well as the over-arching story of how a boy and girl who have unwillingly become step-brother and sister eventually learn to like each other.A story that works on many levels and will be equally enjoyed by adults and children."

The Magic City is a children's book by Edith Nesbit, first published in 1910.After Philip's older sister and sole family member Helen marries, he goes off to live with his new step sister Lucy. He has trouble adjusting at first, thrown into a world different from his previous life and abandoned by his sister while she is on her honeymoon. To entertain himself he builds a giant model city from things around the house: game pieces, books, blocks, bowls, etc. Then through some magic he finds himself inside the city, and it is alive with the people he has populated it with. Some soldiers find him and tell him that two outsiders have been foretold to be coming: a Deliverer and a Destroyer. Mr. Noah, from a Noah's Ark playset, tells Philip that there are seven great deeds to be performed if he wants to prove himself the Deliverer. Lucy, too, has found her way into the city and joins Philip as a co-Deliverer, much to his chagrin.

Thirty-two million Americans have lost jobs because of permanent factory closings since 1970. Gregory Pappas here provides an intimate account of the economic, social, psychological, and medical consequences of one such closing. Once known as "the magic city" of economic opportunity, Barberton, Ohio, is an industrial working-class town of second- and third-generation factory workers. When the Seiberling tire plant in Barberton was closed in 1980, over 1200 jobs were eliminated. Drawing on extensive research, including surveys and interviews with workers laid off by the closing, Pappas offers an incisive analysis of their responses to unemployment. Pappas first details the ways in which the unemployed rubber workers have met their economic needs in the face of declining income. He next evaluates their success in reentering the labor market, as he examines the job-hunting process, the unemployment insurance system, and workers' initiatives toward retraining and relocation. Turning to the psychological effects of the shutdown on workers and their families, Pappas describes unemployed workers' responses to the loss of status, identity, participation in the community, and sense of time. He next considers central historical questions, offering an explanation of the contemporary rise in unemployment and analyzing the prior development of this community that must now bear the burden of change. Two detailed portraits document the adaptations of individuals to the shutdown and explore the complex relationship between social change and personality.