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60 of 62 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
best one-volume history of the Salem witch trials of 1692, September 18, 2002
Every historian dealing with the Salem witchcraft episode has attempted to explain "why Salem?" in terms of their own times. Reasons why have ranged from sheer fakery to mass hysteria to land greed or medical causes. Noted historian Mary Beth Norton has throughly combed through the surviving original records to arrive at a new and convincing explanation of the infamous 1692 witch crisis: the very real fear of Indian attacks on settlements in Massachusetts and Maine. Norton explores the news and letters of the times before and during 1692 to discover that Essex County MA residents were primarily concerned with the hit and run attacks on homes and settlements by Native Americans(some with French support). She bases her thesis on what she has found in original documents, rather than use the records to support her thesis. Puritans and others had very real reasons to be obsessed with the Devil in Massachusetts as they considered Native Americans Satan's agents.... Norton's narrative is most absorbing in relating the cause and effect of Native American attacks on colonial settlements. Two factors in Norton's work are most striking: 1)Just about everyone involved in the Salem witch episode had or knew of someone who had suffered losses in the eras now called King Philip's and King William's Wars, and 2)Nearly everyone involved was related to everyone else in some degree. Norton rights many historical fallicies concerning the Salem witch episode(which she accurately terms Essex County witchcraft), focusing on the Andover area which had the highest concentration of witchcraft accusations and confessions, as well as Salem Town and Salem Village. Norton brings to light some "lost" information on accusers and accused as well, however noting that many documents may be forever lost due to deliberate destruction by either the originators and/or decendents of both accused and accusers, all wanting to preserve their families good names. This fascinating and informationally dense book kept me up late two nights running to finish it. Norton also provides nearly 100 pages of notes and source materials, mostly of interest to serious amateur and professional historians, but full of interesting facts and further explanations. The only real flaw in this best book I've encountered of the 1692 Witch Crisis(and I've read all of them, I believe) is that Norton uses the "they must have thought such and such" language of many of today's historians, rather than write "may" or "might", instead of "must"or "should". Norton does back up these "must" conclusions with evidence, however the reader may silently disagree upon rare occasion. Altogether, this is a must-have book for those interested in "Salem 1692."
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71 of 84 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Content: A/Form: D-, December 4, 2002
When I saw this book reviewed in a national newspaper, I thought, that's a book for me: the Salem witchcraft affair never ceases to fascinate me and this author has an interesting hypothesis. Clearly, Ms. Norton has a detailed grasp of her subject matter, as well as keen lateral thinking. She has put the accusations, examinations and trials into their social context, drawing compelling parallels between events on the frontier (Indian raids) with those in Salem (bewitched young women). The amount of research apparent in this book is staggering. It is all very interesting stuff. Alas, this book is so dry (to use another reviewer's word -- and would that I'd read his review before buying the book) it is barely readable. Just a few pages into the first chapter and I realized I'd made a big mistake, but I decided to sweat it out for awhile to see if it got any better. It didn't. Finally on page 100, I gave up and skimmed the rest, reading passages here and there to confirm that it was more (and more) of the same. The summary chapters at the end were a little better -- but not much. The main problem is that Ms. Norton has taken an interesting idea and flogged it to death. The book could have been half its length and had a greater impact: less, in this case, would have been much more. Second, the constant quotes interrupt the flow of the text, and, to be blunt, Ms. Norton's text needs all the help it can get when it comes to flow. (Ms. Norton also seems to have passive-construction disease. "As was discussed previously" is dull in a doctoral dissertation, in a book intended for mass consumption -- and this one was, I assume -- it's sudden death.) Third, interspersing 17th Century spelling with 21st Century spelling is jarring and, after about ten pages, REALLY annoying. It is clear that Ms. Norton has read these texts, she doesn't need to dazzle us with that fact; it would have been preferable for her to either paraphrase (with proper notations, of course) or, when a quote was absolutely necessary to illustrate a point, to update the spelling. Take this example from page 90: The fishermen, too, hurried to leave, "supposinge it not boote to stay here against such a multitude of enemyes." (not boote?) or this one: Frontier dwellers accurately predicted the consequences of Waldron's deceit, anticipating "Suddain Spolye" that would leave them "in a More danger[ous] Condision" than before. WHAT? The first time I read the latter sentence, I thought Suddain Spoyle was a Native American whose introduction I'd missed. Oddly, on page 92, Ms. Norton quotes one James Roules who uses 20th Century spelling. Was Mr. Roules living in a forward time warp or did Ms. Norton update the spelling in that passage, and, if the latter, why not throughout? I hope that the "other Americanists and the other women in the Cornell history department", to whom Ms. Norton dedicated this book, enjoyed it. But, Ms. Norton, writing an erudite and detailed study for one's colleagues on the history faculty is quite a different animal from writing for those of us (dare I say it?) in the real world, who, if your book is going to be a financial success, are your audience. Does that mean the material has to be dumbed-down? No, not in the least. But, neither is it necessary to hide an excellent hypothesis behind pages of adademic balderdash and blather. Content: A/Form: D-
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
THE definitve work on the Salem witch crisis., June 27, 2004
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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