Reviews

The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present by Ronald Hutton

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_juxtapositive_'s review against another edition

5.0

I really enjoyed this as it was more of a primer into the holistic history of witchcraft, rather than just a case study on the history of witchcraft in New England. Coming from my perspective, I think this book is great if you want an overview of timelines and regions to help guide much deeper studies at a specific point. I’d say this is best suited to someone who knows a bit about the subject already.

The book offers a heavy focus on trying to understand how and why persecution for witchcraft took shape as it did in Europe and eventually beyond. I found the discussion on early Roman witchcraft very interesting, which I admittedly was not very well read in. I definitely want to dive deeper into that for my next read.

My only negative comment about this would be how little Hutton covered into and beyond the early 1700’s. I know other works focus on the New England panic in great detail, but I feel there just could have been more discussed here as well.

I was really pleased with this book overall and will probably end up purchasing it since I just had to return it to the library.