The victims ranged in age from 80 to a five year old child, who awaited her fate in jail wearing miniature manacles. In The Witches, taking on an equally well-covered subject, she starts with the known facts: From the frigid winter to the boiling summer of 1692, somewhere between 144 and 185 people were accused of witchcraft. Schiff's last book, Cleopatra, got under the skin of the much-written about Egyptian queen more than any other biography. It is a rare lapse in an account that is engagingly thorough, thrillingly told and bracingly authoritative. As a footnote, two dogs were killed, too, though Schiff neglects to tell exactly how their executions were carried out. Stacey Schiff's excellent history The Witches: Salem, 1692, measures our continued fascination with the most literal, and most deadly, witch-hunt in American history.ġ9 people died, almost all by hanging, though one poor soul was crushed to death by stone weights laid upon his chest. The communal madness that gripped a small Massachusetts Bay Colony village in the late 17th century still bedevils us - so to speak - over three centuries later. Our thoroughly modern world can't let go of Salem.
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