Salem Possessed

In the past, the word Salem has always been somewhat synonymous with the infamous witch trials. Rather than overlook the ordinary people living in the towns in which Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum write, they instead take the instance of the witch trials of 1692 and springboard from them into a detailed inquisition into the entire history of the small village of Salem. In their own words, Boyer and Nissenbaum have exploited the focal events of 1692 …

…act of prejudice against seemingly random people, letting the public know that it was in fact a calculated attack on many ‘radical’ individuals. And, while the book did occasionally fall short on offering a complete picture of the events, it was still a fairly succinct guide to the economic factors involved with the village of Salem and its fifteen minutes, as it were, and as such would be reccommended to history buffs around the world.