Book Review — “The Witches: Suspicion, Betrayal, and Hysteria in 1692 Salem” by Stacy Schiff (2016, @hachetteus)

Categories: Nonfiction, US History, 17th Century, Puritanism, Witches and Witch-hunts

Ratings: 3.25 on GR (20k ratings), my rating 3 stars ✨

My Summary + Thoughts ⤵️

Presented by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, this book is a lengthy exposition of what scholars and historians know and theorize about the infamous Salem Witch Trials of the 1690s.

In the colonial Massachusetts lands, the witch trials resulted from a town’s mass hysteria involving people claiming possession by devil or knowledge of those working with demonic forces. Puritan sensibilities made this accusation detrimental to one’s reputation… and eventually, their lives and freedom.

Topics this book substantially covers:

• Salem: what was the town like?

• Church + Religion: What was its importance in Salem and how did town politics get involved in the church?

• Members of Community: Relevant people such as prominent families, those afflicted with bewitching, those accused of witchcraft, the authorities + ministers, skeptics.

• The Bewitching: How the first young girls acted and theories held by community, Tituba’s involvement, getting info about the accused from known people to strangers from afar

• Accused: interrogators/investigators, jailing and its conditions, trial and jurors + accusations & defenses

• Symbols: Things the puritans described as signs of guilt or trouble, including their elaborate stories of the accused’s antics and seeing black cats, red books, brooms, different types of animals, etc.

• Hysteria & Sociology: the social contagion + mass hysteria of the witch-hunt and high profile cases. Some theories on why this happened.

And much more. The book fills in gaps and bridges material with details contextualizing the trials. Anything from pointing out influences of feuding families to describing PTSD from Indian attacks, the book provides some padding to the sources. At some points, it’s a bit of a slog because it takes a lot of winding away from the point it’s making, but in all, a decent collection of info presented in a narrative style.

Goodreads Page: www.goodreads.com/book/show/24819449-the-witches Bookstagram Post: A Home Library 🌸 #Bookstagram (@ahomelibrary) • Instagram photos and videos

The Epic Story of Tom Crean: A Tale of Defeat and Survival in the Antarctic

This book talks about defeat and survival. I met Tom Crean while living in Ireland. Some time ago, while traveling through County Kerry, I passed through Annascaul, the village where Tom Crean was born and retired after his career in the British navy and as an explorer.

Even today, you can have a pint at the pub he bought and called - surprise, surprise - The South Pole Inn. It's full of images and documents about Crean's career as an explorer. It's worth a visit if you ever pass through Kerry.

Michael Smith's book flows quickly and passionately. Through Crean's life - a hero rediscovered in the 1990s in Ireland thanks to Smith's biography - we are transported to what is called the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration.

This period spans from the late 19th century to 1917 and defines what is considered one of the last epochs of raw exploration. Without technology support and with very high risks to the crew's lives.

The book's chapters follow more or less the stages of Crean's life, with his three expeditions to the South Pole. These three expeditions all have something in common: they are epic, they fail miserably, Crean and his companions risk their lives, and Crean proves to be a humble hero, endowed with extraordinary willpower and physical strength.

Try to imagine having to walk hundreds of kilometers, with temperatures down to -50, dragging a sled and rationing food. For months. And now imagine having to do something like this three times in your life. That was Tom Crean.

It's a beautiful book, one of the best I've read recently.

One curiosity related to the book about Tom Crean is Scott's Hut. It's a hut located at the South Pole and was built in 1911 during the expedition called Terra Nova (1910-1913) led by Robert Falcon Scott.

It's also Tom Crean's first expedition. This 120 square meter hut was home to 25 men during the winter of 1911. Imagine winter at the South Pole.

The peculiarity is that this structure is not only still there but also visitable virtually thanks to Google Earth.

In 2001, a Time magazine story heralded a “Eurasian Invasion” in the United States, symbolized by multiethnic celebrities such as golfer Tiger Woods and model Li Jiaxin. People of mixed Asian and Western descent, the piece stated, had become “the poster children of globalization” at the turn of the millennium. Perhaps, although as MIT historian Emma Teng chronicles in a new book, relationships and marriages between Westerners and Asians constitute a far older and richer phenomenon than is usually recognized. The issue of Eurasian identity was already a matter of discussion among public intellectuals in the 19th century, and became more common by the first decades of the 20th century. Consider the case of Mae Watkins, an American who in the early 1900s met Tiam Hock Franking, a Chinese youth, at Ann Arbor High School in Michigan. As students at the University of Michigan they married, and in so doing, stepped into a legal minefield. While intermarriage between whites and Chinese was allowed in Michigan at the time, a 1907 U.S. law removed American citizenship from women who married foreign nationals. So the couple moved to China in 1914, although technically, China prohibited marriages between Chinese students abroad and foreign women. The couple’s oldest child, a son born in the United States, had American citizenship. But their two younger children, born in China, could not gain American citizenship until the 1940s. And Mae Watkins Franking, for her part, accepted her new national and ethnic identity, which she described in a ghostwritten memoir published in the 1920s.

Eurasian: Mixed Identities in the United States, China, and Hong Kong, 1842-1943 

"Progressive women, wanting lightness, comfort, and ease of motion joined the "rational dress movement" and formed a society that protested against tightly fitted corsets and heavily weighted skirts... As women doctors began practicing medicine, they recognized all the unhealthy effects of irrational fashions and we're especially convinced that corsets could cause a displaced or prolapsed uterus, atrophy if abdominal muscles, damage to the liver, displacement of the stomach and intestines, and construction of the chest and ribs."

"the the president of the United States Grover Cleveland, to distrust and denounce the popular women's club movement that sometimes fostered these discussions. "These [women's club] are harmful in the way that directly menaces the integrity of our homes and the benign disposition and character of our women's wifehood and motherhood." the President insisted. "I believe that it should be boldly declared that the best and safest club for women to patronize is her home."

These were lines on pg121 from a current book I'm reading called Bold Spirit by Linda Lawrence Hunt about a true story on Helga Estby amazing journey of walk across America during 1890s. As she did that in limited time also had to advertise shorter dresses by wearing it with her daughter Clara across United States to win 10,000 bucks. This story is amazing, now I'm not one to really read books on history but I'm glad I did, this book teach me on some parts of what women had to go thru back then and her amazing journey. Im still in the middle of reading the book but I can't wait to finish it to see how her story ends and I suggest y'all read the book too!

It's amazing looking back on how they treated not only women's fashion style but also there lifestyle to now that women can dress how they want and get to work in office, ofc they are lots more problems in the world including all genders, at least this beautiful movement was successful and hope others will be to in the future.

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British Marine Engineer...by LIANA MARGIVA_Author

On this bright spring day, may the sun shine upon you, warming you with my love.

British Marine Engineer by LIANA MARGIVA_Author

You are my life, my heart, my soul, You opened the door of my heart. You have come into my life, Your feelings have awakened my heart. Your face is what keeps my heart beating. If only you knew how many years I have been Waiting for you. If only you could imagine How much I desire to put my arms around you, To hug you, to kiss you. If only your kisses and The warmth of your embrace could reach me! I would be lonely no more!

Book Amazon Link:

BA in History – (Bachelor of Arts in History)

A Bachelor of Arts (BA) in History is an undergraduate degree program that focuses on the study of the past events and developments of human society. The curriculum gives pupils a thorough understanding of historical occurrences, societies, and cultures, as well as how they relate to the present. Along with learning to understand primary and secondary sources, critically evaluate historical…

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