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The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World
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64/99
Critics
47/99
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Scholars
77/99
Rating
52/99
Volume
17/99
Rating
77/99
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About This Book
A gripping story of a family tragedy brought about by witch-hunting in Puritan New England that combines history, anthropology, sociology, politics, theology and psychology. "The best and most enjoyable kind of history writing. Malcolm Gaskill goes to meet the past on its own terms and in its own place…Thought-provoking and absorbing." —Hilary Mantel, best-selling author of Wolf Hall In Springfield, Massachusetts in 1651, peculiar things begin to happen. Precious food spoils, livestock ails, property vanishes, and people suffer convulsions as if possessed by demons. A woman is seen wading through the swamp like a lost soul. Disturbing dreams and visions proliferate. Children sicken and die. As tensions rise, rumours spread of witches and heretics and the community becomes tangled in a web of distrust, resentment and denunciation. The finger of suspicion soon falls on a young couple with two small the prickly brickmaker, Hugh Parsons, and his troubled wife, Mary. Drawing on rich, previously unexplored source material, Malcolm Gaskill vividly evokes a strange past, one where lives were steeped in the divine and the diabolic, in omens, curses and enchantments. The Ruin of All Witches captures an entire society caught in agonized transition between superstition and enlightenment, tradition and innovation.
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Reviews
"Scrupulously recreating the atmosphere of the times, he largely refuses to cast judgment or to supply distracting modern diagnoses of any mental illnesses that may have been at work."
"a brilliant, unforgettable portrait of a small, beleaguered community in New England in the 17th century."
"Gaskill's vibrant portraits of Springfield community members, especially town founder and magistrate William Pynchon, an amateur theologian whose life 'had been stalked by war, hunger and pestilence,' and lucid explanations of Puritan theology and Massachusetts's intertwined laws of church and state make for dense yet riveting reading."
"The lives of accused witches Mary and Hugh Parsons drive the narrative, often with such a convincing voice that the text bears a fictionlike quality ..."
"An elucidating study on the forces that fed witchcraft hysteria in early America."
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