CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2009
Short listed for the Katharine Briggs Award 2009
Bever has done a great service in bringing an extensive and relevant medical literature into witchcraft studies...a book which bravely challenges so many received ideas can only be good for us all. - European History Quarterly
Bever's book is an exciting and provocative contribution to the study of magic and witchcraft. Reaching far beyond the usual material of history into the disciplines of psychology and neurophysiology, Bever has drawn conclusions both stunning and profound in a work that will move the field forward as surely as it will inspire debate. - Laura Strokes, Journal of Interdisciplinary History
Approaches such as Bever's are a vast improvement over an earlier approach to the witchcraft trials as manifestations of superstition, priestcraft, and bigotry that would flee when exposed to the light of science. - Chas S. Clifton, Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions