A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience

by Emerson W. Baker

The Salem Witch Trials are explored in detail as part of Oxford University Press’s series Pivotal Moments in American History. The author, Emerson ‘Tad’ Baker II is an archaeologist and history professor at Salem State University who has worked extensively on witchcraft in colonial-era America. Baker sees the Salem trials as a phenomenon arising from a ‘perfect storm’ of cultural and historical factors, and marked a turning point as American society was beginning to move on from its founding Puritan principles.

As Malcolm Gaskill—the renowned English historian and bestselling author of The Ruin of All Witches—declared of this book: “Of many books about the Salem witch-trials, only a few really matter. This is one of them.”