What exactly happened back in 1692 in Salem to make everyone go so insane? It's hard to say, now, three hundred plus years after the fact, but Schiff does an excellent job of trying to sort out fact from fiction and make some sense of the scattered and half-complete record that was left behind. Even before the year was out, the good people of Salem were trying to rewrite the record so they didn't go down in history as a bunch of nutcases (they failed). I do enjoy Schiff's slightly snarky footnotes and asides, they make for fun reading as I was shaking my head in disbelief over some of the things that were going on. I know, it's not fair to judge people who lived in a different time by the standards of today, but damn if it isn't hard sometimes.
On a side note, I visited Salem back in October of 2011, and they now gleefully celebrate their witches. It's a popular Halloween destination.
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