Most, perhaps all, African peoples have witchcraft or sorcery beliefs--or both--in some degree, and one would have thought that they would have engaged the attention of ethnographers more than they appear to have done. Much light has been shed on witchcraft ideas in general by anthropological research during the last few decades, and the present essays on the subject in a number of African societies and the critical analysis in the Introduction should help to dispel the many misunderstandings and misconceptions about it that one finds not only in popular thought but also in learned works. This is not a subject of what is sometimes called mere academic interest. Belief in witchcraft may have almost entirely disappeared in our own culture, where it died hard, but in Africa it is still very prevalent, and not only among the uneducated. All the more reason, therefore, to welcome the present volume which takes the study of witchcraft and sorcery a step forward and also provides a textbook which should be of value in anthropological departments and of interest to non-specialists.