"Witch City" Books

Known varyingly as a sorceress, an enchantress, and a devil's consort, the witch has haunted the human consciouness and captured the imagination for thousands of years.

Salem, Massachusetts, is home to one of the largest extant collections of historical architecture in the entire nation. In this long-awaited reprint, noted architectural historian Bryant F. Tolles, Jr. presents an illustrated guide and walking tour covering more than three centuries of building styles and types. The book discusses over 350 buildings and complexes, with individual entries and photographs for nearly 230 structures.

Profusely illustrated study offers chronological view of Salem architecture from 1626-1818. Detailed descriptions and more than 250 rare illustrations of over 100 buildings -- House of the Seven Gables, the Witch House, more.

A study of the Salem witch trials applies contemporary psychology to the hysteria of the late 1600s, analyzing the Puritan mind and linking the trials to the "witch hunts" of the twentieth century.

A history and psychological interpretation of Salem witchcraft in 1692.

In this work, Carol Karlsen reveals the social construction of witchcraft in seventeenth-century New England and illuminates the larger contours of gender relations in that society.

Profiles a New Hampshire community ten years before the infamous Salem witch trials that suffered a series of mysterious events, from demonic sounds and unexplainable movements of objects to the raining of stones on a local tavern, in an account that documents the phenomenon's contributions to subsequent witchcraft hysteria throughout New England.

A cultural history of witch-hunting from the ancient world through the McCarthy era traces the factors that contribute to outbreaks of cultural paranoia and how people were able to accept hysteria-based beliefs about unlikely supernatural powers and occult activities.

"In the first edition of the Bancroft Prize-winning Entertaining Satan, John Putnam Demos presented an entirely new perspective on American witchcraft. By investigating the surviving historical documents of over a hundred actual witchcraft cases, he vividly recreated the world of New England during the witchcraft trials and brought to light fascinating information on the role of witchcraft in early American culture. Now Demos has revisited his original work and updated it to illustrate why these early Americans' strange views on witchcraft still matter to us today. He provides a new preface that puts forth a broader overview of witchcraft and looks at its place around the world--from ancient times right up to the present. "

"I feel deep gratitude for the compassionate contribution that my friend and colleague, Michael Ramseur, has made to the memory of those thousands of souls who dwelled there in search of reclaimed sanity, and to the memory of their loving families and exhausted caretakers. Like no others before him, he has truly understood the whole enterprise, for better or worse, that was the lunatic asylum in Danvers. He has deftly recreated for us in this richly illustrated tome, a tribute to the all-too- human limits of that project in time."

Explores the rites, and ceremonies that characterized Horned God worship in western Europe from palaeolithic times to the Middle ages.

This collection of historic photos pieces together the determination with which Salem confronted the sweeping desolation of the 1914 fire.

Brenda Wineapple navigates the high tides and chill undercurrents of Hawthorne's fascinating life and work with clarity, nuance, and insight. The novels and tales, the incidental writings, travel notes and children's books, letters and diaries reverberate in this biography, which both charts and protects the dark unknowable core that is quintessentially Hawthorne. In him, the quest of his generation for an authentically American voice bears disquieting fruit.

Written to celebrate the bicentennial of Hawthorne's birth, this fascinating chronicle of the author's most fertile years reconstructs his love affair with the town of Concord--a Massachusetts village that hosted more than its share of literary legends, including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

Loose the latchstring and peer into the places where Nathaniel Hawthorne passed back and forth from nineteenth century New England to the fertile country of his imagination. From Salem to Bowdoin College, and through Lenox and Concord, Salemite John Hardy Wright trails the famous author to his "old accustomed chambers" and reveals the inspiration behind an American literary legend in this pictorial biography.

Take a tour through time. Find the hidden paths and places where so-called witches and their accusers walked in 1692 Salem. This fascinating guidebook reveals the true story of the Salem witch trials and describes more than fifty important sites visitors can see today. An international authority reveals the truth behind the myths and helps locate the important houses, churches, and streets of that terrifying time.

Drawing extensively on Colonial era documents and accounts, and with testimony from leading scholars like Jane Kamensky of Brandeis University, Salem Witch Trials exposes the truth about one of the most infamous events in American history.

A study of the Salem witch trials discusses the events, the crucial turning points in the case, the accusers and accused, the confessors, and the judges, setting it all against the backdrop of the social, cultural, and political atmosphere of the period.

Documents the role of Samuel Sewall in the 1692 Salem witch trials, exploring his lesser-known contributions as a anti-slavery agitator, defender of Native American rights, and campaigner against periwigs, in a profile that offers insight into how he was swept up in the zeal that marked the trials and publicly apologized five years later.

The Puritan minister of Boston's Old North church offers his account of the famous trials and discusses ways to detect and defeat the agents of evil.

The first full account of the "American Brontees" focuses on Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia Peabody--three sisters who were essential to American Romanticism as editors, writers, reformers, and ground-breaking thinkers.

Salem overflows with tourists in October, as young and old turn out for "Haunted Happenings." But the community on Boston's North Shore is brimming with life twelve months a year and boasts the cultural interest of the biggest cities in the world—from the legendary witch trials of 1692 to a wealth of 18th- and 19th century architecture to the Peabody Essex Museum. And did we mention Nathaniel Hawthorne? The author of A Scarlet Letter was born and inspired here, and his gothic New England is still palpable on many of Salem''s winding historic streets.

With five essays by leading historians, seventy color photographs of Salem's great buildings and historic sites, and six topical maps, Salem: Cornerstones is a history, a photo album, and a guidebook all in one. Essays include "The Maritime History of Salem" by K. David Goss, "The Witch Trials of 1692" by Richard B. Trask, "Historic Architecture of Salem" by Bryant F. Tolles, Jr., "Nathaniel Hawthorne" by Joseph Flibbert, and "Salem Then and Now" by Jim McAllister.

True stories that capture the spirit of the community, from the founding to present day, illustrated by popular Salem artist Racket Shreve. No one knows Salem like popular lecturer and tour guide Jim McAllister. For years, friends and admirers have asked the popular lecturer and tour guide to put some of his tales in a book. In "Salem: From Naumkeag to Witch City," McAllister finally has done so.

How is a sense of place created, imagined, and reinterpreted over time? That is the intriguing question addressed in this comprehensive look at the 400-year history of Salem, Massachusetts, and the experiences of fourteen generations of people who lived in a place mythologized in the public imagination by the horrific witch trials and executions of 1692 and 1693.

A study of the Puritan village and the people involved in the witch trials of 1692 provides insight into the causes and implications of this notorious episode in American history.

"Traces the story of the judge responsible for executing twenty Salem witch trial victims, discussing how he came to regret his actions, and his later efforts to oppose slavery and further Native American relations and sexual equality."

From the acclaimed author of A Delusion of Satan, a unique gathering of firsthand accounts about the background, course, and repercussions of the Salem witch trials.

Painstakingly researched history of Salem village and the notorious witchcraft trials held there in the late 17th century. Upham not only supplies valuable information on Salem's legislative and economic problems, but also recounts details of local hostilities that sowed the seeds of suspicion and fear among villagers, and helped fuel the witch hunt.

Historian Peter Charles Hoffer reexamines a notorious episode in American history and presents many of its legal details in true perspective for the first time. Hoffer also shows how rights we take for granted today did not exist in colonial times, and he demonstrates how these cases relate to current instances of children accusing adults of abuse.

In Sorcery in Salem, local author John Hardy Wright examines the witchcraft delusion that afflicted Salem Village and Salem Town in the winter of 1691–92. Twenty inhabitants lost their lives at that time; nineteen were hanged on Gallows Hill, and one elderly man, Giles Cory, by remaining mute as a personal protest to the proceedings of the court, was pressed to death under heavy weights. Once the prosecuting examinations began on March 1, 1692, local authorities were uncertain what course the following trials would take. Spectral evidence, in which the shape of a suspected witch tortured people, was a primary indication of guilt, as was the "touch test, in which a victim was released from the witch's power upon the laying on of hands. Not being able to correctly recite the Lord's Prayer was also damning.

A case study of the witchcraft trial of two women in 1662 Lowestoft, England, including a description of the accusers and prosecutors and an analysis of the trial itself, which was cited as a precedent in the Salem witchcraft trials.

Erik Durschmied looks into the history of the witch delusion and the cruel butchers who hunted and executed so-called witches, from the Middle Ages to modern times. He explores the motivations of the real evil-doers - those who condemned, tortured and executed numerous innocent people.

This book examines the persecution and the religious hysteria that inspired the witch hunts of 1450-1750, tracing its roots back to the savage suppression of the heretical Waldensian sect by the Catholic Church.

Stephen Hawley Martin, a successful business leader before becoming a full-time writer, has a knack for keeping readers turning pages. This is especially true of this book, which is an award-winning finalist in the Best Books 2006 Awards competition. Martin credits the ancestor he writes about, who was an accused witch, has having fostered his sense of independence and daring-do. His inherent unwillingness to go along with the crowd has also prompted him to offer up a new theory about what caused the witch hysteria of 1692.

Trial documents and contemporary narratives are used in this discussion of the practice of witchcraft in seventeenth-century New England.

When most people think of Boston between its founding in 1630 and the height of the American Revolution, they probably imagine a procession of Puritan ministers in black followed by Revolutionaries like Paul Revere on horseback. Brenton Simons's Witches, Rakes, and Rogues will change a few minds and shock a few others. By scouring family records and public archives, Simons demonstrates convincingly that the narrow, twisting streets of colonial Boston were also crawling with murderers, con men, identity thieves, and other blackguards.

Covering witchcraft's startling rise throughout Europe in the Middle Ages, this book launches into an absorbing and original study that upsets many of the popular notions about the nature and history of the subject. Includes much enthralling material from art, literature, and ecclesiastical and legal documents, as well as discerning psychological studies of witches and their accusers.