courthompson's review against another edition
3.0
Incredibly thorough telling of the Salem Witch Trials, complete with a lot of political and neighborhood context surrounding the town and village in 1692. The real difficulty I had with this book, and this isn't the author's fault, is that there were SO many people involved and it was incredibly difficult to keep track of each person and what everyone's backstory and history was.
hay_elfkin's review against another edition
Dry, no analysis, not good organization of story either.
jools3303's review
Just no consistent narrative, it jumped all over the place and seemed to have alot of speculation. I wanted to read a full account of the trials and delve into the potential reasoning behind how they started
ericabo_louise's review against another edition
4.0
Some things that surprised me in listening to this: the documentary record for this infamous time in Massachusetts and early American history is shockingly thin; this is in part due to the fact that the accused were unable to leave their own material trail and because the accusers redacted this era in some cases entirely from their own personal papers. Also, Stacy Schiff doesn't go in for speculating too much--I was expecting /much/ more exploration of the /reasons/ this travesty of accusations, incriminations, suffering, and death. She does offer some theories, but mostly this is an accounting of men abusing their positions alongside women exerting agency in any way they could, for good or ill, accusers and accused.
It's worth reading in a time when the term "witch hunt" has lost all meaning--it is not just a metaphor for a baseless investigation versus an innocent party. It is so much more than that; it is about disenfranchisement, belief, and the power of collective sanctimony.
It's worth reading in a time when the term "witch hunt" has lost all meaning--it is not just a metaphor for a baseless investigation versus an innocent party. It is so much more than that; it is about disenfranchisement, belief, and the power of collective sanctimony.
xxstefaniereadsxx's review
dark
informative
slow-paced
3.0
This was a well researched and well written book about the events in Salem, Massachusetts. I would love to go to Salem and see the places mentioned in this book, and I hope to be able to do that one day. The whole concept of witch trials all over the world is baffling to me. People who were supposed to have superior moral compasses were the ones who didn't seem to have one at all. The Salem witch trials got completely out of hand. It was terrible to read about all of this, but this was a very, very good book