Folk and fairy tales pervade the everyday world to such a degree that we are sometimes unaware of their enormous influence on our behavior. In seven essays collected in Breaking the Magic Spell, Zipes discusses historically and critically the evolution of folk tales as fairy tales, their influence on popular beliefs, the politics behind them, and the way they are used in mass media culture today. Zipes looks at how a wide range of authors, including the Brothers Grimm, Perrault, the German romantics, Hans Christian Andersen, Wilde, and Tolkien, used fairy tales as he assesses their enduring importance.