It started in the year 1692, in Salem, Massachusetts, during an exceptionally cold winter, when a minister’s daughter began to scream and convulse. Less than a year later, 19 men and women had been executed as a result of the Salem witch trials. In a new book, the writer Stacy Schiff examines what she calls America’s tiny reign of terror, which affected every rung of Salem’s Puritan society. She joins us Wednesday to explore the events of 1692 and the curious ways they shaped our world today.
Stacy Schiff is the author of Cleopatra: A Life and Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography in 2000. Her new book is called The Witches: Salem, 1692 [Amazon|Indiebound].
