Salem Story : Reading the Witch Trials of 1692 (Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture)

Rating:
Summary: Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah
Review: All I have to say is that this book is VERY hard to stay interested in. I have always found any/all information on the Salem Witch Trails too fascinating...until now! This book is very factual, but seems that it is very repetitious. I think a book CAN be factual and keep ones attention (which is why I purchased the book) but unfortunately, I found this book completely boring. It seems that I am not the only one that thinks this way from other reviews.

Rating:
Summary: Lots of facts; just add water.
Review: I can't believe I more-or-less read this whole book in a single day. It's not, in the ordinary sense, a page-turner. You would expect an English prof to makes things more interesting than this, but in fact the book is often stilted, repetitive, and a bit pompous, not to mention dry. The author gives you little feel for place or time, or even demographic detail. (How many people lived in these towns he's talking about?) And all his references to the Bible seemed very ignorant. One of the odd things about the Salem trial to me, as a Christian, is that there are no strong parallels to these events in the Bible itself. Another interesting paradox, that the author does bring up, is that the pastors in Salem were mostly against the trials. I was hoping to learn fomr about where the Puritans got their ideas about the devil in the first place, and how they reconciled those ideas with the Bible, but no such information was forthcoming here.

Still, if you want to sort out facts in regard to what happened in Salem, and why, this is a very useful resource. The book is thoughtful, somewhat perceptive, and thoroughly researched. (In terms of American history.) In a book I wrote last year, Jesus and the Religions of Man, I included an appendix, "Crusades, Inquisitions, Pograms, and Witch Hunts," relying on another source for the pages on the Salem witch trials. I now discover, thanks to Professor Rosenthal, that I made a mistake or two (nothing vital) by not having read this book first. This is not such a bad book as some of the reviewers below make out; if you skip a bit, it can be valuable and somewhat interesting. But don't mistake it for a Stephen King novel.

Rating:
Summary: Salem Story Has Never Been So Boring
Review: I love to read a lot about Witchcraft and about Salem trials as well, however, this book isn't what I expected it to be..
It is VERY hard to read, boring, and disorganized.
There are a lot of great books about the Salem trials, I recommend you to skip this one..