Rating: 
Summary: worth the trouble
Review: Norton's book is not pleasurable reading, in the sense that it's difficult to get through. There are so many names and so many references, you just can't get a smooth read going.However, it's so much better than the typical colonial american history book, it's worth the trouble. The witchraft hysteria has never been adequately explained, until now. Norton traces the accused and accusers to coastal Maine, where attacks by both French and native americans took a heavy toll in the 1670s and '80s, causing severe emotional trauma and generating gossip. Most coastal Maine families moved to northeast Massachusetts, to towns like Salem, Andover, Boxford, Haverhill, etc. and the accusers tended to come from them. It's the only explanation that makes any sense. Previous attempts to portray the hysteria as resulting from economic divisions were never able to make sense of the judges sending twenty innocent people to their deaths with only the vaguest of evidence.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting and novel theory
Review: The author centers what is indubitably one of the most scholarly accounts I have yet read on the events in Salem on a new premise: That all the events were influenced by the Second Indian War and by the protagonists harrowing experiences during that conflict. Note that this doesn't exclude other causes, such as property disputes, envy, illicit affairs and the like that others have used in the past, and which are also mentioned in this book. I don't know that I agree completely with what Norton is saying, although she does have several valid points. Either way, the book is a magnificent chronology and analysis (albeight colored by Norton's view) of one of the most puzzling events of our nation's early history. As an added bonus, her theory and her attempt at proof made her do a much better job of fitting in the events at Salem with what was happening in the rest of the New World at that time, as well as in England. It's certainly not casual reading, but it is a must read if you are interested in the subject.
Rating: 
Summary: Tedious book
Review: The only reason I am reading this book is because it is mandatory for my American history class in college. I am on page 139, and Mary Norton has still not even remotely reached an accessible theory. I don't know if she's going to or not. One can only hope. To say this is the worst book I've ever read would be an exaggeration, but not a great one. Mary Norton CANNOT make a cohesive point. She rambles extensively and flips about in time, so even if you were familiar enough with the story to know what happened, you'd still probably have a hard time following this account. It's nearly impossible to keep track of what's going on, and just when you think you might have a weak grasp on the story, she goes into a completely unrelated topic. I think she is trying to link them together, but the book moves so incredibly slowly that by the time you've finished a page, you've forgotten what happened before then. It's just a singularly dry (and under-edited) account of an interesting incident in history. I would not recommend this book for voluntary reading.
Rating:
Summary: An interesting approach
Review: The Salem witchcraft hysteria that began in 1692 has for 300 years been the subject of much discussion, interpretation, and reinterpretation. In her book, Norton offers a new explanation of this widely discussed episode. She assigns central importance to fears caused by the Indian Wars and finds connections between the terrors of American's Second Indian War and the colonial authorities' endorsement of the trials. Norton argues that massacres of colonists by during the Second Indian War and the colonial government's failure to effectively counter such killings were the main precipitators of the witchcraft trials. Using newly available materials from the trial records, letters and diaries, she argues that the complexity of political, military and religious factors led to the outbreak of hysterical fits that ended in the infamous trials.
The contemporary Puritan worldview insisted that the military failures of such notable officials as chief judge William Stroughton and Sir William Phips indicated God's displeasure with the New England colonies. As Norton demonstrates, the settlers saw the First and Second Indian Wars and their resulting loss of prosperity as God's punishment for their sins. In April 1692, as these losses mounted, several teenage girls began having fits that were attributed to the devil, to witches and to Indians. The colonists thus found themselves being punished both by visible spirits (Indians) and invisible ones (the devil). In an unusual turn of events, the magistrates of the village took the testimony of these women who normally were not given any political or judicial authority and began the trials. Furthermore, many of the Salem accusers had suffered personal losses at the hands of brutal native tribes. In her analysis of war fears and spiritual hysteria, the author concludes that the state's leaders were all too willing to believe allegations of witchcraft, which they convinced themselves was evidence of Satan's rather than their own incompetence.
Norton provides a detailed account of the ways 17th-century men and women would have thought about the terrible events. Norton does not simply write another history of the crisis, but she looks at the unfair trails from a 17th-century perspective. She quickly uncovers a number of historical threads that have not previously been explored by scholars. Norton, who is a feminist scholar, blames the Massachusetts governor, councils, and judges for the executions of innocent Salem "witches."
In this book Norton provides a detailed and well-researched description of the era as well as historical background information. I do not know whether I should agree with all of Norton's arguments, but she certainly raises some interesting questions that one cannot ignore. I would recommend Norton's book to everyone who wants to learn more about the Salem witch hunt from a new perspective. Previous knowledge on the Salem witch hunt crisis would be an advantage when reading this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Couldn't finish it
Review: The story is a fascinating one, yet in this book it isn't told very well. Norton tries to make a connection with the Salem hysteria and wars with the Indian's in Maine. I didn't really think she connected it very well, and only confuses the reader by going back and forth with the time period and not really explaining the connection(unless she thinks it is obvious, which it isn't). And as another reviewer has written the style is choppy and dry... you have to really be boring to make this story boring and she succeeds. Look for another book on the subject if you are interested. I will be trying to sell my HB at my local used book store.
Rating: 
Summary: Not A Book For Neophytes
Review: This book may be the most exhaustive one ever written on the Salem witchcraft trials. I have read other books on the subject, but I found this one to be tough going. It is not a book for beginners. I have always wondered whether the girls were faking their seizure-like behavior, and I finally found the author's belief on the second to the last page. Author Norton believes the younger girls ages thirteen and under exhibited genuine fits for unknown causes. What about the physical causes such as bleeding and teeth marks, and what caused them? Did they injure themself? The author admits to not having an answer. Some of the older girls in their late teens and early twenties appear to have possibly taken part in collusion in their accusations of others. I guess if that is the case, and their victims were hanged for it, the girls could rightfully be accused of murder. I found parts of the book such as the trials of various ones tough going. The author has tied the witchcraft in Essex County, Massachusetts, to the Indian wars (King Philip's War and King William's War) in the area now known as Maine. If you haven't done any reading on this subject I would suggest you find one of several other books on Salem witchcraft that is available. This book would be suitable for those looking for a very detailed treatment of the subject. I based my rating of three stars on my interest level, but I'm sure those with a greater understanding of the subject would rate it higher.
Rating: 
Summary: Review from the New Orleans Times-Picayune, October 24, 2002
Review: This week, as Halloween approaches, thousands of tourists will descend upon Salem, Massachusetts, a town that has become synonymous with witches, broomsticks and all things spooky. For obvious commercial reasons, Salem officials have embraced this image despite the fact that few people today actually believe that any of the nineteen alleged witches who were hanged in Salem in 1692 actually practiced witchcraft. Instead, thanks to Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, as well as movies and countless books, the hysteria that swept through late seventeenth-century Salem and the trials and executions that followed have become a metaphor for all legal prosecutions run amok. Salem's witchcraft crisis is viewed by many as an instance when fear, ignorance, and intolerance led normally sober-minded Puritans to turn on one another in an accusatory delirium.
Although historians uniformly agree that the Salem witchcraft trials were a tragic miscarriage of justice, there are still sharp disputes over what actually happened in Salem in 1692. The devil, as it were, is in the details. What, for example, caused the fits and seizures that afflicted Salem's young women and led the village's doctor to conclude that Satan had possessed them? Some scholars have suggested that the girls suffered from encephalitis, or from hallucinations caused by ergot fungus that poisoned the town's wheat. Others have asserted that the accusers were attention starved delinquents who simply faked most, if not all, of their ailments.
Scholars also have asked why it was that Salem's leaders were so willing to believe the accusations of witchcraft leveled by a group comprised mostly of teenage girls. Salem was, after all, a rigidly patriarchal society in which young women had minimal status. Why were the girls' increasingly outrageous allegations, including those made against some of Salem's most reputable citizens, treated with such credulity? Because, many historians have concluded, Salem was a town that had long been divided by bitter religious, political and property disputes. Salem's citizens were eager to accept charges of witchcraft, these scholars conclude, because they had long suspected the worst of their neighbors.
With "In The Devil's Snare," Cornell historian Mary Beth Norton, steps into the fray. Norton believes that many previous accounts of the Salem crisis have focused too closely on Salem itself. To truly understand what happened there, she argues, one has to recognize that Puritans throughout New England during this time were living in a state of fear. Between 1688 and 1692, Norton writes, the Puritan colonies had suffered a series of bloody military setbacks at the hands of the French and their Native-American allies. Indian raids had destroyed a number of prosperous Puritan villages along the Maine coast and the attackers had shown little mercy towards women, children, and non-combatants. Stories circulated quickly throughout Massachusetts that described the gruesome carnage and Puritan families, as a result, lived in a world filled with tales of torture, disembowelings, and crushed skulls. Several of the key accusers in the witchcraft trials were refugees from the Maine frontier and, as Norton suggests, it is easy to imagine why they believed that Satan was near.
The Puritans lived in a pre-Enlightenment, pre-industrial society where, Norton writes, the "visible and invisible world often intersected". "When they encountered harmful events that otherwise seemed inexplicable," she notes, "New Englanders often concluded that a malevolent witch had caused their troubles." In normal circumstances, however, formal legal allegations of witchcraft against specific individuals seldom arose and when they did authorities treated them with caution. But in the "supercharged" atmosphere of 1692, the fits experienced by the young women led many to fear that the colony faced the devil's assaults on the frontier and within Salem itself. When the afflicted girls proceeded to accuse prominent men such as John Alden and George Burroughs of both bewitching them and conspiring with the Indians "the assaults from the visible and invisible worlds became closely intertwined in New Englanders' minds."
Norton is not the first historian, of course, to note that the Indian raids made the Puritan colonists unusually apprehensive. But what Norton has done that other historians have not is carefully assemble a substantial body of evidence that reveals that the residents of Salem explicitly linked the Maine massacres with the witchcraft allegations. Because Salem residents thought that the devil was attacking on two fronts simultaneously, Norton concludes, the judges in the witchcraft trials operated on a wartime footing. Their job, they believed, was to root out and destroy witches at home who were aiding Satan's armies on the frontier. During the witchcraft trials they zealously pursued this goal, ignoring key common law protections for the accused, and treating the defendants as if they were guilty unless proven innocent.
In the process of mustering her evidence, Norton also debunks some of the myths that have surrounded the witchcraft affair. She, for example, fully exonerates Tituba, the Indian slave who some chroniclers have alleged led the young women of Salem in Barbados-influenced witchcraft ceremonies. The girls, so the story goes, slipped into a guilt-driven hysteria after Salem adults learned of their behavior. But Tituba, Norton found, was neither a devotee of voodou or from the Caribbean. Instead, Norton cogently argues, the accusers implicated Tituba first because she was an enslaved Native-American living amidst a population then acutely afraid of Indian attacks.
"In the Devil's Snare" is a compelling, meticulous, and convincing account of one of the most disturbing episodes of the colonial period. Norton's conclusion that a fear of outside threats led Salem's leaders to overzealously pursue supposed domestic enemies is both new and important. And although she cautions that the witchcraft trials can only be fully understood when viewed within the context of their times, many readers will nevertheless find that a cautionary message for the present day resonates throughout the pages of her book.
Rating:
Summary: Content: A/Form: D-
Review: When I saw this book reviewed in a national newspaper, I thought, that's a book for me: the Salem witchcraft affair never ceases to fascinate me and this author has an interesting hypothesis. Clearly, Ms. Norton has a detailed grasp of her subject matter, as well as keen lateral thinking. She has put the accusations, examinations and trials into their social context, drawing compelling parallels between events on the frontier (Indian raids) with those in Salem (bewitched young women). The amount of research apparent in this book is staggering. It is all very interesting stuff. Alas, this book is so dry (to use another reviewer's word -- and would that I'd read his review before buying the book) it is barely readable. Just a few pages into the first chapter and I realized I'd made a big mistake, but I decided to sweat it out for awhile to see if it got any better. It didn't. Finally on page 100, I gave up and skimmed the rest, reading passages here and there to confirm that it was more (and more) of the same. The summary chapters at the end were a little better -- but not much. The main problem is that Ms. Norton has taken an interesting idea and flogged it to death. The book could have been half its length and had a greater impact: less, in this case, would have been much more. Second, the constant quotes interrupt the flow of the text, and, to be blunt, Ms. Norton's text needs all the help it can get when it comes to flow. (Ms. Norton also seems to have passive-construction disease. "As was discussed previously" is dull in a doctoral dissertation, in a book intended for mass consumption -- and this one was, I assume -- it's sudden death.) Third, interspersing 17th Century spelling with 21st Century spelling is jarring and, after about ten pages, REALLY annoying. It is clear that Ms. Norton has read these texts, she doesn't need to dazzle us with that fact; it would have been preferable for her to either paraphrase (with proper notations, of course) or, when a quote was absolutely necessary to illustrate a point, to update the spelling. Take this example from page 90: The fishermen, too, hurried to leave, "supposinge it not boote to stay here against such a multitude of enemyes." (not boote?) or this one: Frontier dwellers accurately predicted the consequences of Waldron's deceit, anticipating "Suddain Spolye" that would leave them "in a More danger[ous] Condision" than before. WHAT? The first time I read the latter sentence, I thought Suddain Spoyle was a Native American whose introduction I'd missed. Oddly, on page 92, Ms. Norton quotes one James Roules who uses 20th Century spelling. Was Mr. Roules living in a forward time warp or did Ms. Norton update the spelling in that passage, and, if the latter, why not throughout? I hope that the "other Americanists and the other women in the Cornell history department", to whom Ms. Norton dedicated this book, enjoyed it. But, Ms. Norton, writing an erudite and detailed study for one's colleagues on the history faculty is quite a different animal from writing for those of us (dare I say it?) in the real world, who, if your book is going to be a financial success, are your audience. Does that mean the material has to be dumbed-down? No, not in the least. But, neither is it necessary to hide an excellent hypothesis behind pages of adademic balderdash and blather. Content: A/Form: D-
Rating:
Summary: Don't do it, unless...
Review: You are a history professor. Imagine that you and all the other American Colonial history experts and academicians have gathered for your annual conference. Prof. Mary Beth Norton presents her theories on the political and historical context of the Salem witchcraft trials; more than anything she is determined that her vigorous scholarchip and extensive notes will bolster the plausibility of her findings. Are you bored yet? Well that's this book in a nutshell. I did finish the book but good gracious, who would have thought that this most fascinating episode of colonial America could possibly be SUCH dry reading? I should have read the reviews before buying it. I am grateful for all the time and effort that clearly went into this book. And to tell the truth, I will never again think of the witch hunt period as separate from the first and second Indian wars. Like I said, her scholarship is unimpeachable. But I would recommend reading a chapter or two before purchasing this book.
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