They Flew
A History of the Impossible

Excellent Exploration of Levitation, Bilocation and Other Extreme States This is the best book to cover the remarkable physical effects of early modern religious hysteria that I have read. As the title avers, they flew. But how—and why?......more

GOD this book was so fun. there are so many tangents in here but they build up perfectly and you can tell there's a real sense of humour about the whole thing not that he isn't taking it seriously because there's nothing more serious than a joke but just approaching everything with a certain lightne......more

A powerful critique of the “dogmatic materialism” that tends to dominate within the historiography on early modern Europe by exploring the plasticity of supernatural phenomena.......more

The book was very, very interesting and well-written. As a Protestant, I must confess that I tended to be quite sympathetic to the Reformer's claims that many of these miracles may have been infernal in origin. Dr. Eire did a good job showing that this interpretation was not a complete freak in the......more

The shift from the medieval to the modern world is never an easy line, and whose to say that our modern and rational worldview is axiomatically "correct." Carlos Eire provides a masterful account of "impossible" events, divine and demonic (sometimes depending on who you ask), right as the world begi......more