They Flew
Book description
An award-winning historian's examination of impossible events at the dawn of modernity and of their enduring significance
"Historically rich and superbly written."-David J. Davis, Wall Street Journal
Accounts of seemingly impossible phenomena abounded in the early modern era-tales of levitation, bilocation, and witchcraft-even as skepticism, atheism, and empirical science were…
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Why read it?
1 author picked They Flew as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I confess to being a nonfiction reader, and that's what's so striking about this book. Carlos Eire is a respected historian. They Flew, published by a mainstream university press (Yale), offers a no-nonsense, historical rendition of saints that were reported to have levitated, or outright flown. Like others who've addressed this topic seriously, Eire makes the point that we can't simply dismiss historical records because they don't match our modern expectations. This is a fairly big book, and it takes a lot for me to select a long book as my favorite for the year, but this one did so.…
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