Confused about AI and worried about what it means for your future and the future of the world? You're not alone. AI is everywhere—and few things are surrounded by so much hype, misinformation, and misunderstanding. In AI Snake Oil, computer scientists Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor cut through the confusion to give you an essential understanding of how AI works, why it often doesn't, where it might be useful or harmful, and when you should suspect that companies are using AI hype to sell AI snake oil—products that don't work, and probably never will. While acknowledging the potential of some AI, such as ChatGPT, AI Snake Oil uncovers rampant misleading claims about the capabilities of AI and describes the serious harms AI is already causing in how it's being built, marketed, and used in areas such as education, medicine, hiring, banking, insurance, and criminal justice. The book explains the crucial differences between types of AI, why organizations are falling for AI snake oil, why AI can't fix social media, why AI isn't an existential risk, and why we should be far more worried about what people will do with AI than about anything AI will do on its own. The book also warns of the dangers of a world where AI continues to be controlled by largely unaccountable big tech companies. By revealing AI's limits and real risks, AI Snake Oil will help you make better decisions about whether and how to use AI at work and home.

Which animal holds the record for having the most common names? When and why did we stop calling giraffes “camel-leopards”? Do mushrooms have anything to do with mush or rooms? Why are dandelions named after lions’ teeth? How should you really pluralize “octopus”? Find out how and why raccoons are named after their hands, squirrels after their tails and olives after their oil. Discover why “dog” is an etymological mystery and “bear” contains a hair-raising horror story. Follow trails word history in the etymological excursion that is Into the Words. This book puts the fun in fungi, leaves language lovers contemplating forest for its trees, and reveals the wonderful stories hiding in our words for birds, beasts, insects, flowers, soil and everything in between. Featuring both the origins of the names of different organisms, this book will captivate anyone who revels in both the glorious chaos and logic of the English language and the beauty and majesty of everything that lives on the planet Earth.

The definitive history of how witchcraft and black magic have survived, through the modern era and into the present day Cursed Britain unveils the enduring power of witchcraft, curses and black magic in modern times. Few topics are so secretive or controversial. Yet, whether in the 1800s or the early 2000s, when disasters struck or personal misfortunes mounted, many Britons found themselves believing in things they had previously dismissed – dark supernatural forces. Historian Thomas Waters here explores the lives of cursed or bewitched people, along with the witches and witch-busters who helped and harmed them. Waters takes us on a fascinating journey from Scottish islands to the folklore-rich West Country, from the immense territories of the British Empire to metropolitan London. We learn why magic caters to deep-seated human needs but see how it can also be abused, and discover how witchcraft survives by evolving and changing. Along the way, we examine an array of remarkable beliefs and rituals, from traditional folk magic to diverse spiritualities originating in Africa and Asia. This is a tale of cynical quacks and sincere magical healers, depressed people and furious vigilantes, innocent victims and rogues who claimed to possess evil abilities. Their spellbinding stories raise important questions about the state’s role in regulating radical spiritualities, the fragility of secularism and the true nature of magic.

Why have societies all across the world feared witchcraft? This book delves deeply into its context, beliefs, and origins in Europe’s history "Traces the idea of witches far beyond the Salem witch trials to beliefs and attitudes about witches around the world throughout history.”— Los Angeles Times The witch came to prominence—and often a painful death—in early modern Europe, yet her origins are much more geographically diverse and historically deep. In this landmark book, Ronald Hutton traces witchcraft from the ancient world to the early-modern stake.   This book sets the notorious European witch trials in the widest and deepest possible perspective and traces the major historiographical developments of witchcraft. Hutton, a renowned expert on ancient, medieval, and modern paganism and witchcraft beliefs, combines Anglo-American and continental scholarly approaches to examine attitudes on witchcraft and the treatment of suspected witches across the world, including in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, Australia, and North and South America, and from ancient pagan times to current interpretations. His fresh anthropological and ethnographical approach focuses on cultural inheritance and change while considering shamanism, folk religion, the range of witch trials, and how the fear of witchcraft might be eradicated.

Men dominate history because they write it. Women’s vital part in the shaping of the world has been consistently undervalued or ignored. Rosalind Miles now offers a fundamental reappraisal that sets the record straight. Stunning in its scope and originality, The Women’s History of the World challenges all previous world histories and shatters cherished illusions on every page. Starting with women in pre-history the author looks beyond the myth of ‘Man the Hunter’ to reveal women’s central role in the survival and evolution of the human race. She follows their progress from the days when God was a woman through to the triumphs of the Amazons and Assyrian war queens: she looks at the rise of organised religion and the growing oppression of women: she charts the long slow struggle for women’s rights culminating in the twentieth century women’s movements: and finally she presents a vision of women breaking free. This brilliant and absorbing book turns the spotlight on the hidden side of history to present a fascinating new view of the world, overturning our preconceptions to restore women to their rightful place at the centre of the worldwide story of revolution, empire, war and peace. Spiced with tales of individual women who have shaped history, celebrating the work and lives of the unsung female millions, distinguished by a wealth of research, The Women’s History of the World redefines the concept of historical reality.

As she did with Martin Guerre, Natalie Zemon Davis here retrieves individual lives from historical obscurity to give us a window onto the early modern world. As women living in the seventeenth century, Glikl bas Judah Leib, Marie de l'Incarnation, and Maria Sibylla Merian, equally remarkable though very different, were not queens or noblewomen, their every move publicly noted. Rather, they were living "on the margins" in seventeenth-century Europe, North America, and South America. Yet these women--one Jewish, one Catholic, one Protestant--left behind memoirs and writings that make for a spellbinding tale and that, in Davis' deft narrative, tell us more about the life of early modern Europe than many an official history. All these women were originally city folk. Glikl bas Judah Leib was a merchant of Hamburg and Metz whose Yiddish autobiography blends folktales with anecdotes about her two marriages, her twelve children, and her business. Marie de l'Incarnation, widowed young, became a mystic visionary among the Ursuline sisters and cofounder of the first Christian school for Amerindian women in North America. Her letters are a rich source of information about the Huron, Algonquin, Montagnais, and Iroquois peoples of Quebec. Maria Sibylla Merian, a German painter and naturalist, produced an innovative work on tropical insects based on lore she gathered from the Carib, Arawak, and African women of Suriname. Along the way she abandoned her husband to join a radical Protestant sect in the Netherlands.Drawing on Glikl's memoirs, Marie's autobiography and correspondence, and Maria's writings on entomology and botany, Davis brings these women to vibrant life. She reconstructs the divergent paths their stories took, and at the same time shows us each amid the common challenges and influences of the time--childrearing, religion, an outpouring of vernacular literature--and in relation to men. The resulting triptych suggests the range of experience, self-consciousness, and expression possible in seventeenth-century Europe and its outposts. It also shows how persons removed from the centers of power and learning ventured in novel directions, modifying in their own way Europe's troubled and ambivalent relations with other "marginal" peoples.

Based on research in the Inquisitorial archives, the book recounts the story of a peasant fertility cult centred on the benandanti. These men and women regarded themselves as professional anti-witches, who (in dream-like states) apparently fought ritual battles against witches and wizards, to protect their villages and harvests. If they won, the harvest would be good, if they lost, there would be famine. The inquisitors tried to fit them into their pre-existing images of the witches� sabbat. The result of this cultural clash which lasted over a century, was the slow metamorphosis of the benandanti into their enemies � the witches. Carlo Ginzburg shows clearly how this transformation of the popular notion of witchcraft was manipulated by the Inquisitors, and disseminated all over Europe and even to the New World. The peasants� fragmented and confused testimony reaches us with great immediacy, enabling us to identify a level of popular belief which constitutes a valuable witness for the reconstruction of the peasant way of thinking of this age.

This is the story of Margarida de Portu, a fourteenth-century French medieval woman accused of poisoning her husband to death. As Bednarski points out, the story is important not so much for what it tells us about Margarida but for how it illuminates a past world. Through the depositions and accusations made in court, the reader learns much about medieval women, female agency, kin networks, solidarity, sex, sickness, medicine, and law. Unlike most histories, this book does not remove the author from the analysis. Rather, it lays bare the working methods of the historian. Throughout his tale, Bednarski skillfully weaves a second narrative about how historians "do" history, highlighting the rewards and pitfalls of working with primary sources. The book opens with a chapter on microhistory as a genre and explains its strengths, weaknesses, and inherent risks. Next is a narrative of Margarida's criminal trial, followed by chapters on the civil suits and appeal and Margarida's eventual fate. The book features a rough copy of a court notary, a notorial act, and a sample of a criminal inquest record in the original Latin. A timeline of Margarida's life, list of characters, and two family trees provide useful information on key people in the story. A map of late medieval Manosque is also provided.

A true, never-before-told story-discovered in a secret Vatican archive-of sex, poison, and lesbian initiation rites in a nineteenth-century convent. In 1858, a German princess, recently inducted into the convent of SantAmbrogio in Rome, wrote a frantic letter to her cousin, a confidant of the Pope, claiming that she was being abused and feared for her life. What the subsequent investigation by the Churchs Inquisition uncovered were the extraordinary secrets of SantAmbrogio and the illicit behavior of the convents beautiful young mistress, Maria Luisa. Having convinced those under her charge that she was having regular visions and heavenly visitations, Maria Luisa began to lead and coerce her novices into lesbian initiation rites and heresies. She entered into a highly eroticized relationship with a young theologian known as Padre Peters-urging him to dispense upon her, in the privacy and sanctity of the confessional box, what the two of them referred to as the special blessing. What emerges through the fog of centuries is a sex scandal of ecclesiastical significance, skillfully brought to light and vividly reconstructed in scholarly detail. Offering a broad historical background on female mystics and the cult of the Virgin Mary, and drawing on written testimony and original documents, Professor Wolf-Germanys leading scholar of the Catholic Church, and among the very first scholars to be granted access to the archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly the office of the Inquisition-tells the incredible story of how one woman was able to perpetrate deception, heresy, seduction, and murder in the heart of the Church itself.

Welcome to Camp Safe Woods, a summer camp dedicated to repairing the spirits of those who have faced the unimaginable. Through tailored programs and a supportive community, we empower young hearts to rewrite their stories and unlock the potential for a future unburdened by fear, allowing kids to rediscover joy, hope, and the freedom to embrace life to the fullest. Annie anticipated a life-altering journey, aiding trauma survivors at her grandfather’s camp as a counselor, but her expectations shattered against a macabre reality. Unveiling the tragic pasts of her fellow counselors and the campers under her care, she stumbles upon a world more chilling than her darkest fears. As the summer descends into a terrifying spiral and the camp’s serenity crumbles, they discover that a killer driven by a sinister secret is lurking among them. While those around her are forced to relive the worst experience of their lives and the camp is turned into a hunting ground, Annie faces a haunting uncertainty—will she fall victim to this deranged killer, or will she defy the odds, emerging with her very own survival story, worthy of a proper inhabitant of Camp Safe Woods.

Hailey’s summer at Camp Safe Woods was cut short because of the murders. She’s still having nightmares about her past. Now, she’s in a new town where bodies are appearing again. Can anything else make her life more difficult? Well, she also has to choose a prom dress.After moving to the sprawling town of Pineside, California, to be closer to her new friends and fellow Squirrel Cabin campers, Alejandra and Billy, Hailey hoped to enjoy her senior year of high school and move on from the tragedies she had gone through. However, when the police come to her door, alerting her that her father had broken out of prison and an anonymous letter left at her locker leads her to a mysterious woman’s corpse, it becomes apparent that Hailey’s nightmares aren’t over.Pineside soon finds itself plagued with a spree of murders with a clear but mysterious connection to Hailey. While navigating the fears of who the serial killer will target next, and dealing with symptoms of traumas from her past, she is still trying to live the life of a normal high school girl that she deserves. As a member of the Prom committee, Hailey has an important role in planning a night that her class will never forget. Little does she know, everyone who attends this Prom Night will soon wish to forget what they see that night—those who survive, that is.