{"product_id":"book-2p9t","title":"Worlds of Fear and Wonder","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe supernatural has ever been a part of human existence. Medieval Christians saw miracles in the lives of saints and put faith in savants who spoke with the dead. For later Catholics and Protestants, the spiritual realm remained charged with divine and diabolic forces, but so was the mundane, where witches and conjurers, rotten harvests, and sweeping sicknesses lurked. During the First World War, soldiers carried charms into the trenches, and in the aftermath bereaved families visited Spiritualist mediums to reach beyond the veil. Today, about seven in ten Americans affirm the existence of angels.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe past, it seems, is haunted territory, teeming with specters and demons and strange tales. The present is, too, even as belief systems have changed and daily life has seemingly been rationalized by technological forces. Surveying a broad spectrum of the magical and the marvelous in Western experience, \u003ci\u003eWorlds of Fear and Wonder\u003c\/i\u003e digs into the emotional foundations of supernatural belief. The supernatural, historian Malcolm Gaskill shows, has always been as much a feeling as an idea. We can understand our ancestors' lives as they experienced them because, while beliefs and values may have changed, the fundaments of emotion have not.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFlying nuns, witchcraft, uncanny encounters in the seance room: Gaskill unlocks the secrets of unseen worlds by searching hearts as well as minds. A work that bridges alchemy and science, magic and religion, the immaterial and the material, \u003ci\u003eWorlds of Fear and Wonder\u003c\/i\u003e locates the profound truth underlying humanity's most persistent fantasies.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Tantor","offers":[{"title":"Audiobook","offer_id":67917036650800,"sku":"BD2p9t","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0879\/2784\/9264\/files\/2p9t-Square-cover.webp?v=1790874607","url":"https:\/\/downpour.com\/products\/book-2p9t","provider":"Downpour","version":"1.0","type":"link"}