James Doty grew up in California, deeply poor, with an alcoholic father and an invalid mother who tried to commit suicide. His life was a dead end until the summer he was 12, when he stumbled into the Cactus Rabbit Magic Shop looking for a plastic thumb. Inside he encountered Ruth, who gave him a series of practices designed to ease his suffering and manifest his desires. Her final mandate was that he make sure to keep his heart open and to teach these techniques to others.Jim would go on to put Ruth's practices to work and experience extraordinary results - power, wealth, and expensive habits. But he neglects to mind Ruth's instruction to keep his heart open with disastrous results - until he has the opportunity to make a spectacular charitable contribution that will virtually ruin him.Part memoir, part science, part inspiration, and part practical instruction, Into the Magic Shop shows us the extraordinary things that happen when we harness the power of both the brain and the heart

The award-winning New York Times bestseller that inspired BTS's K-pop song 'Magic Shop'.

The day that 12-year-old James Doty walked in to his local magic shop is the day that changed his life.

Once the neglected son of an alcoholic father and a mother with chronic depression, he has gone on to become a leading neurosurgeon, based at Stanford University. He credits Ruth for this incredible turnaround: the remarkable woman he met at the Cactus Rabbit Magic Shop, who devoted the summer to transforming his mind and opening his heart.

In this uplifting memoir, Jim explains the visualisation techniques Ruth taught him that gave him the self-esteem to imagine a new future for himself. He examines the science behind mindfulness and why the skills he learned - of focus and attention - now help him to think fast and keep calm in the operating theatre. And he shows us what is possible when you start to change your brain and your heart. Into the Magic Shopimparts some powerful life lessons about how to live better, and inspires us to believe that we all have inside us the capacity to change our own destiny.

'I'm sure many readers will be moved by this inspiring story to open their hearts and see what they too can do for others' - His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Autorentext

Dr James R Doty was a Clinical Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at Stanford University, and the Director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, which he cofounded with the Dalai Lama. As the Director of CCARE, he spearheaded many research projects on compassion and altruism, and their relationship to the brain. He was also an inventor and philanthropist, sitting on the board of a number of charities, including Friends of New Orleans (FONO) and the Dalai Lama Foundation, of which he was Chairman.

He is the author of the New York Times and international bestseller of Into the Magic Shop (Yellow Kite, 2016), which has now been translated into 40 languages and is the basis for the album, Love Yourself: Tear by K-pop sensation BTS. He passed away in August 2025.