I didnt want to write a book that suggested that magic good/technology bad.

I was always a big Justice League fan. I always loved Batman, Superman - I have a weird Martian Manhunter fixation.

Seduction is an absolute pleasure to read -- clever, suspenseful, exciting, mysterious, learned, and engrossing. Some of the best historical fiction I've read in quite some time and just plain reading fun. M.J. Rose is at the top of her game, and that is saying something.

In my research, what I found most interesting was how common and ordinary magic was to people in the past.

I do, in fact, have a book club. I meet with a couple of guys once a month of a lunchtime discussion of some interesting text, usually, but not always, philosophical.

The world is full of wonders that cannot be measured. That is why they are wonders.

Wright and Cowen, who have separately written important scholarly works on the financial history of the early republic, here repackage their research for readers of popular history, and do so impressively.