The witchcraft hysteria of colonial America is a topic of enduring fascination, perhaps just because it is so difficult to understand while also a tempting stage for ridiculous theories and tabloid fantasies. This book avoids all nonsense, while scrupulously examining the real, and most minute, facts and details of the lives and communities. But it is no arid exercise in cataloguing details, and the author employs broad knowledge of psychology and sociology to illuminate the culture and mindset where this unique mass hysteria flourished. It reflects wonderful analysis and presentation, painstakingly built on factual minutia. Yet it is broad in scope and deep in humanistic analysis of the witchcraft phenomenon.

Demos used an Inter-Disciplinary approach to writing this book. It resulted in a book that is dull and boring. Demos utilized Biography, History, Psychology, and Sociology in an attempt to better understand the witch crazes that periodically swept New England in the 17th century. Psychology is a load of garbage and Sociology is not much better. Demos should have kept his focus on his area of expertise: History. He focused on other outbreaks of witch hysteria other than Salem in 1692, and this proved to the book's only strong point. Salem is the best known outbreak of mass hysteria relating to witchcraft in Colonial America, but it was not the only one. Some outbreaks were simply accusations against 1 or 2 people at most. Other outbreaks may have seen several people accused, but not on the scale of Salem. I give this book a "1-star" rating simply because Amazon does not have one for "0-star" books.