Witches (Schiff)

Book Reviews
Enchanting. Out of the shadows of the past come excitable young girls, pompous ministers, abusive judges, grieving parents, and angry neighbors, all of them caught up in a terrifying process that seemed to have no end: discovering who among them deserved death for being in league with Satan. The Witches is as close as we will ever come to understanding what happened in and around Salem in 1692. Courtrooms, streets, churches, farm yards, taverns, bedrooms-all became theater-like places where anger, anxiety, sorrow, and tragedy are entangled. An astonishing achievement.
David D. Hall, Bartlett Research Professor of New England Church History - Harvard University


Schiff, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is a reliably entertaining guide...[to] one of the strangest, most fascinating chapters in American history.
Tom Beer - Newsday


Schiff, who had a hit with her biography Cleopatra, may get even more attention for her new look at America's infamous witch trials.
Jane Henderson - St. Louis Post-Dispatch


A vivid picture of 1692 Massachusetts [that] brings the Salem trials to life.
Steve Bennett - San Antonio Express News


Schiff has made a career of exploring the private lives of iconic women throughout history.... Now she's expanding her focus to a group of notable women: the women in the center of the hysteria over witches that consumed the early days of the U.S. colonies.... The episode lasted only a year, but had a sizable influence on our nation's history, which Schiff's book will unpack with her elegant prose and exhaustive research.
Shelby Pope - KQED


(Best of the Fall) The Pulitzer-winning historian conjures a big year for witchcraft hysteria and hangings.
New York Magazine


Riveting nonfiction.
Entertainment Weekly


Few authors set the scene of history quite like Stacy Schiff.... The Witches brings a fresh eye to the worst misogynist atrocity in American history, tracing the complex cultural and psychological origins of the Puritan hysteria.
Megan O'Grady - Vogue.com


[Schiff] reconstructs the time and place in remarkable detail, offering portraits of the protagonists in all their poignant, if often infuriating, humanity. Through an immersive narrative involving a cast of dozens pulled from the historical record, Schiff skillfully re-creates the visceral tensions at the heart of everyday life in the Massachusetts Bay settlement.
Peter Manseau - Bookforum


No stone [is] left unturned.... Schiff recreates the most chill-inducing, finger-pointing months in American history.
Steph Opitz - Marie Claire


Schiff applies her descriptive prowess and flair for the dramatic to the Salem witch trials. The book is packed with details and delivered with a punch, but it suffers from a dearth of nuance.... This retelling succeeds as a work of gripping popular nonfiction, but for those already familiar with the subject, it will serve only as light reading.
Publishers Weekly


Schiff traces the course of the witch hunts, ... provid[ing] exciting digressions into the nature of...witchcraft, local political and social disputes, religious instruction, and Puritan life; though....the work is weak in structure and organization...[it] will find a welcome audience among readers of witchcraft or colonial histories. —Evan M. Anderson, Kirkendall P.L., Ankeny, IA
Library Journal


(Starred review.) Compulsively readable.... The best-selling Schiff never disappoints, and her eagerly anticipated account of the Salem witchcraft tragedy lives up to expectations, providing a fascinating account of one of the most infamous years in American history. —Margaret Flanagan
Booklist


[Shciff] ably weaves together all the assorted facts and many personalities from the 1692 Salem witch trials and provides genuine insight into a 17th-century culture that was barely a few steps away from the Dark Ages.... As history, The Witches is intelligent and reliable; as a story, it's a trudge over very well-trod ground.
Kirkus Reviews