For any cultural historian, it is a challenge to find a topic that few others have explored, that offers enough sources, and that tells a story that provides insight into the human condition, past and present. Monica Black has found that topic. This examination of mystic healer Bruno Groning and others like him in post-WWII Germany reveals how trauma can give rise to irrationality, suspicion, and anomie. Germans’ collective guilt and/or denial of the crimes committed during the war stimulated a spiritual crisis which these healers shared, but also capitalized on egregious ways. Some were prosecuted and reputations were sometimes ruined by the mere suggestion that they were witches with access to supernatural powers. All this incredibly happened in a nuclear age, as Germany moved toward a postwar economic miracle in the 1960s. An amazing story, well-told.