The Witches: Salem, 1692 (Paperback) by Stacy Schiff

Book Synopsis

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Cleopatra, the #1 national bestseller, unpacks the mystery of the Salem Witch Trials.

It began in 1692, over an exceptionally raw Massachusetts winter, when a minister's daughter began to scream and convulse. It ended less than a year later, but not before 19 men and women had been hanged and an elderly man crushed to death.

The panic spread quickly, involving the most educated men and prominent politicians in the colony. Neighbors accused neighbors, parents and children each other. Aside from suffrage, the Salem Witch Trials represent the only moment when women played the central role in American history. In curious ways, the trials would shape the future republic.

As psychologically thrilling as it is historically seminal, The Witches is Stacy Schiff's account of this fantastical story -- the first great American mystery unveiled fully for the first time by one of our most acclaimed historians.

Review Quotes

The Witches is the fullest and finest story ever told about Salem in 1692, and no one else could tell it with the otherworldly flair of Stacy Schiff.--Joseph J. Ellis, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Quartet

The Witches is a vivid investigation of the original American nightmare. Stacy Schiff brilliantly teases apart the strands of myth and history. In an age when superstition remains a vibrant and dangerous force, her book is, alas, also relevant.--Russell Shorto, author of The Island at the Center of the World

[A] fresh take on the Salem witch trials.--Mackenzie Cummings-Grady, Boston Globe

[A] must-read.--Joanna Coles, Cosmopolitan

[Schiff] brings her gifts to the confusions of Salem, piecing together a dramatic narrative from disparate and often tersely unrevealing sources, including diaries, memoirs, and court reports. She never lacks for an apt detail, drawing on academic studies that focus on everything from the region's sexual mores to the way sounds echoed in the atmosphere.--Ruth Franklin, Harper's

[Schiff] reconstructs the time and place in remarkable detail, offering portraits of the protagonists in all their poignant, if often infuriating, humanity. Through an immersive narrative involving a cast of dozens pulled from the historical record, Schiff skillfully re-creates the visceral tensions at the heart of everyday life in the Massachusetts Bay settlement.--Peter Manseau, Bookforum

A brilliant, exceptionally well-researched account of the 1692 Salem witch trials.... Much of what is so compelling about The Witches is how vividly Schiff brings this very different era to life.... This narrative approach works so well because Schiff just happens to be a superb and witty writer.... The Witches definitely sparkles.--Alden Mudge, BookPage

A masterful account.... Schiff painstakingly reconstructs not just the events of 1692 but the world that birthed them.... Her accomplishment is all the more remarkable because there are no records of the court sessions-Schiff sifted through archival material as well as historical accounts written by witnesses years after the epidemic.--Elizabeth Hand, Los Angeles Times

A vivid picture of 1692 Massachusetts [that] brings the Salem trials to life.--Steve Bennett, San Antonio Express News

Compulsively readable.... Schiff expertly unknots what drove the Puritans to mass delusion. The reasons are timeless.... That the 1692 Salem witch trials were an anomaly is an illusion of the vantage point; we remain fascinated because we sense in our skin (and see in the news) that the same could be happening right now.--Nancy Rommelmann, Newsday

Compulsively readable.... The best-selling Schiff never disappoints, and her eagerly anticipated account of the Salem witchcraft tragedy lives up to expectations, providing a fascinating account of one of the most infamous years in American history.--Margaret Flanagan, Booklist (starred review)

Dazzling.... Schiff is at her best, infusing a historical event with as much life, mystery, and tragedy of any novelist.--Nicole Jones, Vanity Fair

Enchanting. Out of the shadows of the past come excitable young girls, pompous ministers, abusive judges, grieving parents, and angry neighbors, all of them caught up in a terrifying process that seemed to have no end: discovering who among them deserved death for being in league with Satan. The Witches is as close as we will ever come to understanding what happened in and around Salem in 1692. Courtrooms, streets, churches, farm yards, taverns, bedrooms-all became theater-like places where anger, anxiety, sorrow, and tragedy are entangled. An astonishing achievement.--David D. Hall, Bartlett Research Professor of New England Church History, Harvard University

Fantastic.--Kristin Van Ogtrop, Time

Few authors set the scene of history quite like Stacy Schiff.... The Witches brings a fresh eye to the worst misogynist atrocity in American history, tracing the complex cultural and psychological origins of the Puritan hysteria.--Megan O'Grady, Vogue.com

From Cleopatra to the Salem coven. From intelligent rule to hysteria, mayhem, and murder. The Salem witch trials offer Stacy Schiff an out-sized drama that seized Americans' imaginations more than 300 years ago. All of Schiff's books demonstrate her rigor as a historian and her dexterity as a stylist. The Witches proves she has something else: the instincts of a thriller writer. This book needs a seat belt.--Kathryn Harrison, author of Joan of Arc

History in the hands of Stacy Schiff is invariably full of life, light, shadow, surprise, clarity of insight, and so it is again and then some in her latest work, The Witches. Few writers combine as she does superb scholarship and an exceptional gift for language with amazing reach and agility of mind. This is a superb book.--David McCullough, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Wright Brothers

Meticulous and disturbing.... One of Schiff's strongest contributions to this American horror story is her constant reminder that while we may never be able to definitively explain exactly why 19 people (and two dogs) were executed for witchcraft in Massachusetts (owing in part to a concerted effort to expunge any public records), we can still learn something from it.--Buzzy Jackson, Boston Globe

No stone [is] left unturned.... Schiff recreates the most chill-inducing, finger-pointing months in American history.--Steph Opitz, Marie Claire

Once again Stacy Schiff dazzles us. The Witches is a must read for anyone intrigued by this baffling and horrifying chapter from America's Puritan past. What Schiff uncovers is mesmerizing and shocking. Her meticulous research and lyrical writing lay bare an injustice that we should never forget-lest we repeat it.--Patricia Cornwell, author of Depraved Heart

Riveting nonfiction.--Entertainment Weekly (Fall Books Preview)

Schiff brings to bear a sensibility as different from the Puritans' as can be imagined: gentle, ironic, broadly empathetic, with a keen eye for humor and nuance.... Thanks to this, and to Schiff's narrative gifts, the present-day reader flits above New England's smoky chimneys and thatched rooftops, swoops into the locked studies of magistrates and clergymen; stalks among the jealousies and rivalries of village schemers; even dwells briefly in the innermost thoughts of schoolchildren dead three centuries and more. It is wizardry of a sort-in a flash of brimstone, a whole world made wondrously visible.--Adam Goodheart, Atlantic

Schiff delves into the archive to remind us that one of the most notorious miscarriages of justice in American history was also one of the few moments which featured regular women-not queens, not goddesses, but mothers and wives and daughters and servants-at the very center of drastic historical change. A wrenching, unforgettable read.--Katherine Howe, author of The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane

Schiff delves into the minds and history of 1692 Salem as no one has before.--Laura DeMarco, Cleveland Plain Dealer

Schiff has made a career of exploring the private lives of iconic women throughout history.... Now she's expanding her focus to a group of notable women: the women in the center of the hysteria over witches that consumed the early days of the U.S. colonies.... The episode lasted only a year, but had a sizable influence on our nation's history, which Schiff's book will unpack with her elegant prose and exhaustive research.--Shelby Pope, KQED

Schiff possesses a talent for forcing us to rethink what we know.... The Witches explodes a lot of myths.--Deirdre Donahue, AARP

Schiff, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is a reliably entertaining guide...[to] one of the strangest, most fascinating chapters in American history.--Tom Beer, Newsday

Schiff, who had a hit with her biography Cleopatra, may get even more attention for her new look at America's infamous witch trials.--Jane Henderson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Schiff's account is better written than any I have encountered....you are likely to find yourself turning the pages (as I did) with a sense that until now you'd never quite taken in what happened...[a] brilliantly assured narrative.--John Wilson, Christianity Today

Schiff's books are based on serious scholarly research, yet they're conveyed in bright, accessible prose... She displays the same sharp intelligence and eclectic interests that distinguish her body of work.--Publishers Weekly (Most Anticipated Books of the Fall)

Stacy Schiff has beautifully combined remarkable story telling with historical accuracy and insight. Shehas opened up important new avenues for Salem scholarship.--Bernard Rosenthal, editor of Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt

Stacy Schiff has brought her extraordinary gifts as researcher and writer to revivify the old but endlessly compelling story of the 1692 Salem witch hunt. Her mastery of detail, her ingenuity in spotting connections and trend lines, and her intuitive feel for the people involved combine in a brilliant portrayal of cascading human tragedy. It is sharply etched. It is ground level. It is emotionally powerful. It is full of surprising twists and turns. If history is time travel, this is a journey readers will never forget.--John Demos, author of Entertaining Salem

Stacy Schiff's The Witches is an indelibly etched morality fable, the best recounting of the Salem hysteria in modern times. Clear-eyed and sympathetic, Schiff makes the complex seem simple, crafting a taut narrative that takes in religion, politics, folklore, and the intricate texture of daily life in Massachusetts Bay, with particular attention to those 'wonder-working' women and girls who chose this moment to blow apart the Puritan utopia they'd helped to found. It's all here in one devilish, oracular book.--Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Margaret Fuller

Sumptuous.... [This] sweeping history of the Salem witch trials resonates with its exploration of religion and paranoia.... Schiff nimbly connects Salem's fatal mania to subsequent witch-hunts, such as McCarthyism and the rise of Movement conservatism, revealing how close we remain to the specters and demons that stalked the Bay Colony more than three centuries ago.--Hamilton Cain, Minneapolis Star Tribune

The fall's biggest history title.--Jocelyn McClurg, USA Today

The Pulitzer-winning historian conjures a big year for witchcraft hysteria and hangings.--New York Magazine (Best of the Fall)

This brilliant, compelling book is the most meticulously researched, effectively constructed, and beautifully written work I have read in a very long time. It is dramatic history and also a timeless thriller: who-or what-drove a New England town to madness three centuries ago, resulting in the deaths of nineteen men and women for 'witchcraft?' The answers are astonishing.--Robert K. Massie, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Catherine the Great

This fully documented narrative...will find a welcome audience among readers of witchcraft or colonial histories as well as Schiff's legion of fans.--Library Journal

Unlike the drudgery of the movie adaptation of The Crucible, which you probably watched in high school, Schiff writes with conviction and a strong sense of narrative, elevating the dry snooze of history to a new level. It's an endlessly fascinating read.--Megan Reynolds, Gawker

With a bravura introduction, Schiff sets the stage, painting Salem as a backwater populated by a few hundred humorless and self-righteous souls.... Schiff's contribution is her ability to render history in vital detail, and from a contemporary perspective.--Claudia Rowe, Seattle Times

With fresh feminist insight, Schiff plumbs the mindset of late-seventeenth-century New England to explain our original 'national crackup.'--Louisa Kamps, Elle

You might be frightened by how much of what Schiff uncovers about the way women were seen in American society in 1692 still resonates in contemporary culture.--Refinery29

About The Author

Stacy Schiff is the author of Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Saint-Exupéry, a Pulitzer Prize finalist; A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, winner of the George Washington Book Prize and the Ambassador Book Award; Cleopatra: A Life, winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for biography; and The Witches: Salem, 1692.

Schiff has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and named a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres by the French Government, she lives in New York City.