The Devil's Disciples: The Makers of the Salem Witchcraft Trials

By Peter Charles Hoffer and Professor Peter Charles Hoffer

Book Overview

Approaching the subject as a legal and social historian, Peter Charles Hoffer offers a fresh look at the Salem outbreak based on recent studies of panic rumors, teen hysteria, child abuse, and intrafamily relations. He brings to life a set of conversations -- in taverns and courtrooms, at home and work -- which took place among suspected witches, accusers, witnesses, and spectators. The accusations, denials, and confessions of this legal story eventually resurrect the tangled internal tensions that lay at the bottom of the Salem witch hunts.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801852013
• ISBN13: 9780801852015
• Release Date: April 1998
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.1"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

taking a fresh look

The Devil's Disciples is well-researched study presented in a pleasant, readable style. One of the problems with many of the Salem witch trial books is that the authors try to ascribe the entire phenomenon to only a single cause. Hoffer successfully examines various possibilities and integrates them, showing how a multitude of factors conspired to generate and sustain the hysteria. The information he provides regarding the personalities and experiences of key individuals is particularly interesting. His assessment of frontier conditions at the time helps the reader take the perspective and mind-set of the town. Well worth reading, especially if some of the older, better-known resources, such as John Demos' Entertaining Satan, are familiar.

Accurate -yet interesting- narrative on Salem witch hunt.

Peter Hoffer examines the roots of the witch hunt in Salem by actually telling the narrative of the the witch Tituba. He writes of slavery, family relationships and social relationships giving a fresh outlook to how the Salem witch hunt came to be. Students who would like to understand the Salem witch craft and are looking for an accurate book full of quotes dates and footnotes, yet at the same time not at all boring, should read "The Devil's Disciples". This book seems like a story being told and the reader really gets a feel of what it was like to be living at those times and what the people's mentality was like. You'll know the facts--but better yet, you'll feel the facts after you've read this book