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Title: In the Devil's Snare : The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692 by MARY BETH NORTON ISBN: 0-375-70690-9 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 14 October, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.69 (16 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: worth the trouble
Comment: Norton's book is not pleasurable reading, in the sense that it's difficult to get through. There are so many names and so many references, you just can't get a smooth read going.
However, it's so much better than the typical colonial american history book, it's worth the trouble. The witchraft hysteria has never been adequately explained, until now. Norton traces the accused and accusers to coastal Maine, where attacks by both French and native americans took a heavy toll in the 1670s and '80s, causing severe emotional trauma and generating gossip. Most coastal Maine families moved to northeast Massachusetts, to towns like Salem, Andover, Boxford, Haverhill, etc. and the accusers tended to come from them.
It's the only explanation that makes any sense. Previous attempts to portray the hysteria as resulting from economic divisions were never able to make sense of the judges sending twenty innocent people to their deaths with only the vaguest of evidence.
Rating: 4
Summary: Interesting and novel theory
Comment: The author centers what is indubitably one of the most scholarly accounts I have yet read on the events in Salem on a new premise: That all the events were influenced by the Second Indian War and by the protagonists harrowing experiences during that conflict. Note that this doesn't exclude other causes, such as property disputes, envy, illicit affairs and the like that others have used in the past, and which are also mentioned in this book.
I don't know that I agree completely with what Norton is saying, although she does have several valid points. Either way, the book is a magnificent chronology and analysis (albeight colored by Norton's view) of one of the most puzzling events of our nation's early history. As an added bonus, her theory and her attempt at proof made her do a much better job of fitting in the events at Salem with what was happening in the rest of the New World at that time, as well as in England. It's certainly not casual reading, but it is a must read if you are interested in the subject.
Rating: 5
Summary: THE definitve work on the Salem witch crisis.
Comment: It is hard to imagine that Prof. Norton's narrative and analysis of the Salem witch crisis will be surpassed anytime soon. This book re-examines an episode in American colonial history that many other historians have tried to tackle. What makes Norton's book special is the care with which she has combed through the primary sources and the skill with which she sifts the data in arriving at what is, for my money, the best explanation of the Massachusetts tragedy.
As Norton points out, the Salem witchcraft episode involved many more people, and was much more intense, than any other such episode in America or England. Her central explanation for Salem's "uniqueness" is that, in Massachusetts in 1692, there was a fatal concurrence of New Englanders' belief in witchery and the supernatural, renewed war against northern New England settlements by the French and the Wabanaki Indians, and a series of military disasters for Massachusetts (including the wiping out of several villages). Although, as Norton readily acknowledges, this theory was advanced by other historians in scholarly articles in the 1980s, no one had previously attempted to flesh out the theory fully and examine the entire, sad series of events in light of it.
Not only does Norton do a fantastic job as a scholar, but she also is (contrary to what some Amazon reviewers have said) quite a good writer. I only wish all scholarly works were written with Norton's careful craftsmanship and scorn for pseudo-intellectual gobbledygook. The book also includes excellent and helpful maps, appendixes, and index. It should be noted as well that Norton is amazingly generous in her acknowledgements (in her notes and elsewhere) to all the researchers and even graduate students who gave her ideas and data. She sets a fine example for other historians.
I wouldn't think that this book would be beyond the capacity of anyone with a college education. Some of the other reviews, unfortunately, show that my estimate of the reading public may be too high. I suppose that, if you just want to be titillated and not have to think too hard, there are other books you should buy. But, if you really want to understand an important and notorious series of events in American history, then this is the book to read.
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Title: Salem Possessed; The Social Origins of Witchcraft (Harvard Paperbacks) by Paul S. Boyer ISBN: 0674785266 Publisher: Harvard University Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 1976 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: The Salem Witch Trials Reader by Frances Hill ISBN: 030680946X Publisher: Da Capo Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $18.50 |
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Title: The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England by Carol F. Karlsen ISBN: 0393317595 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 April, 1998 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: A Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials by Frances Hill ISBN: 0306811596 Publisher: DaCapo Press Pub. Date: June, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Damned Women: Sinners and Witches in Puritan New England by Elizabeth Reis ISBN: 0801486114 Publisher: Cornell University Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 1999 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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