Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
Audiobook9 hours
A Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials
Written by Frances Hill
Narrated by Wanda McCaddon
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
()
About this audiobook
During the bleak winter of 1692 in the rigid Puritan community of Salem Village, Massachusetts, a group of young girls began experiencing violent fits, allegedly tormented by Satan and the witches who worshipped him. From the girls' initial denouncing of an Indian slave, the accusations soon multiplied. In less than two years, nineteen men and women were hanged, one was pressed to death, and over a hundred others were imprisoned and impoverished.
This evenhanded and now-classic history illuminates the horrifying episode with visceral clarity, from the opportunistic Putnam clan, who fanned the crisis to satisfy personal vendettas and greed, to four-year-old "witch" Dorcas Good, who was chained to a dank prison wall in darkness till she went mad. By placing the distant period of the Salem witch trials in the larger context of more contemporary eruptions of mass hysteria and intolerance, the author has created a work as thought-provoking as it is emotionally powerful.
This evenhanded and now-classic history illuminates the horrifying episode with visceral clarity, from the opportunistic Putnam clan, who fanned the crisis to satisfy personal vendettas and greed, to four-year-old "witch" Dorcas Good, who was chained to a dank prison wall in darkness till she went mad. By placing the distant period of the Salem witch trials in the larger context of more contemporary eruptions of mass hysteria and intolerance, the author has created a work as thought-provoking as it is emotionally powerful.
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Reviews for A Delusion of Satan
Rating: 4.166666666666667 out of 5 stars
4/5
12 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This was a pretty good book. Inclusive. Tended to skip around a bit, which was really confusin when you were in the middle of the trials and suddenly had to stop to hear the life story of Reverend So-and-so, but it provided thorough, logical reasoning and was overall a good resource. She kept referencing other books I had never heard of, which was kind of annoying, but it proved she had done her research!