The Witches

This is a well-reseached , solid, coherent hisory of the Salem Witch Trials. On a subject that can be quite chaotic, Stacy Schief writes in an organized, coherent manner. She manages to convey a wealth of historic information without vering into the dry and academic. It is a subject matter that has a lot of "moving parts". I appreciated the "Cast of Characters" at the beginning of the book that helped me understand who was who, and kept the large cast of characters from becoming overwhelming. I apperciated how meticulous Schief is with the facts without becomming dry ans academic. I really enjoyed her engaging writing style. Her detailed discussion of what brought the trials to an end and rhe ensuing fallout was one of the best I've ever read. I'm a Salem descendant (Bridget Bishop) and I've read a lot of books on the Witch Trials. This is one of the best.

A very interesting, but most depressing tale. The mass hysteria, instigated by by teenage girls encouraged by ministers, and followed by children turning on their parents, parents on their children, husbands on their wives, neighbor on neighbor, is incomprehensible, ending in the execution of 19 or 20 citizens, including 5 men and 14 women, with many others dying in the local dungeon that passed as a jail.Many confessed to being witches and were spared. Those that denied were sent to the gallows. If one believes in the devil and witches, it becomes understandable. But even the locals recognized that something was wrong and abruptly the trials stopped after a 9-month inquisition, forever leaving a indelible black mark on our national psyche. I couldn't wait to get through the book of endless trials and warped testimony. It was too unreal. The author presents some modern explanations that may or not be valid. I blame it on religious indoctrination, even though ministers were caught up in the crossfire. It doesn't say much for the Puritan ethic.The book is well researched and documented,but not a joy to read

The Salem witch trials were much more complicated than what I had been led to believe. Stacy Schiff sorts out all the variables for us with her extenstive research, thwarted somewhat by Massachusetts Bay's inability to preserve or outright destruction of court records. The first culprit in the happening was Samuel Parris, the Salem village minister, whose niece, Abigail Williams, was struck with strange afflictions, along with her nine-year old cousin, Parris's daughter Betty. “The cousins complained of bites and pinches by 'invisible agents' They barked and yelped. ..” We single out Samuel because he may have been overzealous as a minister, taking his job home with him. He also told his flock they had a duty to love him. Puritans were encouraged to examine their behavior and that of others for evidence of evil. An Indian slave, Tituba, made it worse by embellishing in elaborate detail on the witchcraft she'd seen as the girls and others of their ilk began to finger neighbors and even family members as witches and warlocks. Poor George Burrough's, Salem village's first minister, was labeled as the devil. His major crime may have been his rejection of Salem village when he left of his own accord, tired of the back-biting and the rumor mongering. As we know, 19 men and women were eventually hanged, including two ministers, and an old man was crushed to death. Then there's good old Cotton Mather, who couldn't seem to stop publishing, Over four hundred books, according to Schiff. At first Mather was rather helpful, when he insisted that “spectral evidence” such as witches flying through the air on boards was not reliable evidence. Later he changed his mind or seemed to anyway. He was also positive that the end times were near. As St. Augustine had feared when Revelation was added to the New Testament, its contents were viewed as literal. Just when you're thinking Mather is an utter ninny, the smallpox epidemic runs rampant in Massachusetts Bay. Mather, who had had some medical training, was for inoculations. He paid the price. Puritans didn't like to interfere in God's providence. Perhaps the man who bares the brunt of the blame is William Stoughton, the head magistrate of the trials. He was also acting governor and supreme court justice. When Rebecca Nurse was found not guilty, Stoughton called the jury back, pointing out that Rebecca had recognized two other accused witches when they entered the court and said something like “What are you doing here?” She had been in prison with them for months. Anyway, he sent them back to contemplate some more and she was found guilty. Stoughton's motto seemed to be “guilty until proven innocent”and sometimes not even then. Another variable was the animosity between the Putnam family of Salem Town and the Town family of Salem Village. This was a litigious society and the Towns and Putnams were constantly squabbling about property rights. Rebecca Nurse maiden name was Town. Stacy Schiff goes into extensive detail about what might have possessed the young girls who testified about the accused witches. She never quite says they were faking, as were the Swedish girls that Mather mentioned in his book on previous unexplained phenomena. But she implies that the girls might have had some adult help. Every time an accused witch entered the courtroom, they sent into convulsions as if they'd been coached. They also knew enough to calm down during the “touch test.” Supposedly, if you were a witch, and you touched a victim, your venom would bounce back on you and the victim would appear normal. Schiff also implies that this sort of hysteria has happened before, as in the Communism scare of the early fifties which resulted in the hearings on Un-American activities and McCarthyism; she never does say they're happening now with the paranoia involving ISIS, but she does say Americans have a penchant for this type of hysteria.

Damaged and dusty

Sehr empfehlenswert.

As expected

Stacy Schiff has a marked gift for story-telling. She has peppered her compendious narrative with lively sketches of the main players, making them more understandable to modern readers. She depicts the physical appearance of the confessors as if she had met with them. She devotes a great deal of attention to the environment as well: we feel the cold, the darkness, the barren aspect of the land. That was on the plus side. But there is a negative side. For all her immersion into this oppressive world, Stacy Schiff rarely addresses the most interesting and vexing issue: why did all this happen ? How could the authorities hang or otherwise kill 14 perfectly innocent villagers on the eve of the 17th century, at a time when "witches" had practically disappeared from European courts. Why and why so late ? What element of the historical context might help to understand ? In spite of the tons of books and articles written on the subject, the answer to this crucial question still largely eludes us.

Bought for a family member who was overjoyed to receive the book as a gift probably had a past life during these times as he’s a forty something male and not a usual book to choose for someone that’s never had a fascination with this time period until now the soul resolving past life trauma.