I have only read a couple of the chapters in this book. It starts, however, with an account of Ana Bonus Kingsford's unfortunate attempt to murder Louis Pasteur with magic, and then further on (in the Intro.) says that we must "stop apologizing for magic." So... that old black magic again? An inauspicious beginning, at the least. I have personally never cared for, be they occultist or political activist, any whose self-righteous beliefs inspire them to attempt violence to others: "An' it shall cause no harm." The rest of the book seems to be some sort of effort to 1) delineate the sources of post Golden Dawn magic, and 2) to show how magic was transformed by its association with scientific ideas. The study is purely academic and maintains that scholarly distance, so well known, between the arm and the chair. In other words, Ms. Butler seems to know very little about actual Magical practice. The sources that she seeks in Renaissance thought, etc., are well known to any in the occult community through any of nearly innumerable sources and as for the thesis that 20th c. magic was transformed by access to scientific ideas, as should also be, again, well known, science and magic have gone hand in hand since the days of Egyptian Heka through Platonism to Renaissance Alchemy and on, quite unlike Christian theology, for example, which has fought with science for a thousand years and more. The book may be useful for some in the sociologically oriented academy, but it is not recommended for any serious student of the occult (us old black magicians?).