... [an] enlightening history.

The contents of Mr. Gosden’s cauldron are almost as eclectic as the ingredients that Macbeth’s hags favored. There are delightfully entertaining passages, especially on picturesque spells.

His book is breathtaking in scope.

Gosden treats readers to a history of humanity through the lens of magic.

This contention, which undergirds most of his book, is entirely true: any strand of behavior that’s lasted throughout the whole length of human history is eminently worth serious study. And for the bulk of Magic, a History, that’s just what Gosden does. His inquiry looks back to prehistoric times and ranges across the whole breadth of the world, from ancient China to the Eurasian steppes to the long Middle Ages in Europe. His endeavor is to understand the role of magic in human societies over the sprawl of 40,000 years, and although that’s a mind-bogglingly enormous goal, the book pulls in a fascinating array of cultures and aspects of magic rites and rituals. The book’s central weakness is, unfortunately, its central tenet: 'Magical fictions are underpinned by magical fact.' There is no such thing as 'magical fact'.

[A] bold, gripping and arrestingly readable universal history of magic.

... not for the faint of heart. Not that it’s frightening or infused with the supernatural. Rather, it is a dense, exhaustive tome designed less for the uninitiated than for those with an already deep interest in the topic and experience with the subject at hand.

At times the book’s ambition is more hindrance than help, as Gosden bewilderingly dedicates a single chapter to three continents while electing not to discuss South Asian magic at all. Despite such gaps in the story, Magic is an authoritative history of humanity’s engagement with the supernatural..

... sophisticated and wide-ranging study of the role of magic in human history.