... captivating.

The opening chapters...deftly sprint through centuries of scientific history in the course of introducing the...demons of Descartes, Laplace and Maxwell. But the book’s pace becomes more relaxed once it arrives at the 20th century.

... [for]technologies that threaten human existence, the use of demons feels appropriate...their very identity suggests the workings of a mischievous or malevolent force. Perhaps no group of scientists better understood that than the men and women of the Manhattan Project...and Canales is fascinating on their ethical deliberations.

Canales explores so many fields and societal implications of scientific debates, from atomic bombs to stock-market fluctuations, that she seems to weave in nearly every demon reference of the past four centuries, however tangential. Some meandering historical asides stray from her solid survey of seminal demonic invocations.

... thought-provoking and highly readable.