The Once & Future Witch Hunt: A Descendant's Reckoning from Salem to the Present

Author:   Alice Markham-Cantor ,  Rebecca Traister ,  Silvia Federici
Publisher:   Llewellyn Publications,U.S.
ISBN:  

9780738776279


Pages:   384
Publication Date:   08 June 2024
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
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The Once & Future Witch Hunt: A Descendant's Reckoning from Salem to the Present


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Overview

Past and present collide in this page-turning investigation into Salem's irrepressible question: how could this have happened? In 1692, Martha Allen Carrier was hanged in the Salem witch trials as the ""Queen of Hell."" Three hundred years later, her nine-times-great-granddaughter, Alice Markham-Cantor, set out to discover why Martha had died. As she chased her ancestor through the archives, graveyards, and haunted places of New England, grappling with what we owe the past, Alice discovered a shocking truth: witch hunts didn't end in Salem. Extensively researched and told through alternating fiction and non-fiction chapters, The Once & Future Witch Hunt does not treat Salem as a cautionary tale. It treats Salem as an instruction manual—not on how to perform witch hunts, but how to stop them. Foreword by Rebecca Traister, New York Times bestselling author. Afterword by Silvia Federici, author of Caliban and the Witch.

Full Product Details

Author:   Alice Markham-Cantor ,  Rebecca Traister ,  Silvia Federici
Publisher:   Llewellyn Publications,U.S.
Imprint:   Llewellyn Publications,U.S.
ISBN:  

9780738776279


ISBN 10:   0738776270
Pages:   384
Publication Date:   08 June 2024
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately.

Table of Contents

Contents Foreword xiii Cast of Historical Figures xvii Introduction: Truth and Fiction 1 1. The Red Book 5 2. Traps and Rabbits 11 3. The Witch Question 17 4. The King's Guard 25 5. The Surveillance Age 39 6. The Plague 45 7. The Murder Wall 49 8. Putnam and Parris 59 9. Follow the Money 69 10. Winter 77 11. Under an Evil Hand 87 12. The First Confession 93 13. Prophets and Puppeteers 101 14. The Witches' Sabbath 109 15. All Maps Useless 121 16. The Examination of Martha Carrier 123 17. Naming Names 131 18. In the Jail 141 19. No Return 153 20. Neck and Heel 161 21. The Grave 171 22. The Trumpets and the Drums 181 23. The Gauntlet 187 24. The Trial 199 25. Thirty Thousand 207 26. The Sheriff and the Minister 213 27. The Devil in the Ground 221 28. Forever and Ever and Amen 227 29. The Witch Finder 233 30. The Hill 239 31. Burial 247 An Incomplete List 255 Epilogue 263 Afterword 269 Acknowledgments 271 Notes 273 Bibliography 293

Reviews

"""This is the most vivid and accessible introduction to the world's most notorious witch trials that a newcomer is likely to find, and also a very timely warning for the present."" --Ronald Hutton, author of The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present ?""In this fascinating and powerful look at the story of one family caught up in the Salem witch trials, Alice Markham-Cantor performs a kind of literary magic, blending fact and fiction into a form perfectly suited to the troubling subject matter and the limits of the historical record. The exact truth of what happened to her ancestor Martha Carrier will never be known, but thanks to this indelible book, readers can imagine Martha's life and, alas, her death."" --Ann Packer, author of The Children's Crusade ""Through lively characters and fast-paced storytelling, Markham-Cantor transports us directly into the world of the Salem witch trials. The Once & Future Witch Hunt clearly shows that there is nothing exceptional about the conditions in which witch hunts arise. Rather, we see how the urge to blame, scapegoat, and other is all too typically human."" --Miranda Forsyth, director of the International Network Against Accusations of Witchcraft and Associated Harmful Practices ""Alice Markham-Cantor has done a remarkable thing here. From the sparest bones of ancestor's story, she has fashioned a thoroughly engaging work of scholarship that is equal parts historical fiction, personal narrative, feminist theory, and a good old-fashioned detective yarn. In The Once & Future Witch Hunt, Markham-Cantor rescues Martha Carrier from one of the darkest corners of our nation's past. Her voice, and Markham-Cantor's too, will linger in your memory long after you've turned the final page."" --Alexandra Styron, author of Reading My Father"


"""This is the most vivid and accessible introduction to the world's most notorious witch trials that a newcomer is likely to find, and also a very timely warning for the present."" --Ronald Hutton, author of The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present ""In this fascinating and powerful look at the story of one family caught up in the Salem witch trials, Alice Markham-Cantor performs a kind of literary magic, blending fact and fiction into a form perfectly suited to the troubling subject matter and the limits of the historical record. The exact truth of what happened to her ancestor Martha Carrier will never be known, but thanks to this indelible book, readers can imagine Martha's life and, alas, her death."" --Ann Packer, author of The Children's Crusade ""Through lively characters and fast-paced storytelling, Markham-Cantor transports us directly into the world of the Salem witch trials. The Once & Future Witch Hunt clearly shows that there is nothing exceptional about the conditions in which witch hunts arise. Rather, we see how the urge to blame, scapegoat, and other is all too typically human."" --Miranda Forsyth, director of the International Network Against Accusations of Witchcraft and Associated Harmful Practices ""Alice Markham-Cantor has done a remarkable thing here. From the sparest bones of ancestor's story, she has fashioned a thoroughly engaging work of scholarship that is equal parts historical fiction, personal narrative, feminist theory, and a good old-fashioned detective yarn. In The Once & Future Witch Hunt, Markham-Cantor rescues Martha Carrier from one of the darkest corners of our nation's past. Her voice, and Markham-Cantor's too, will linger in your memory long after you've turned the final page."" --Alexandra Styron, author of Reading My Father ""Once started, I could not put this book down. The author's remote ancestor becomes a real person, whose death by hanging was provoked by neighbours' claims of her witchcraft, encouraged by religious leaders. The modern cases listed show such beliefs occurring world-wide and generating similar responses."" --Jean La Fontaine, author of Witches and Demons: A Comparative Perspective on Witchcraft and Satanism ""A scholarly and also magical interweaving of two stories, two historical periods, and two women's sensibilities: of the author, delving deep into the history of Salem and her own distant ancestor; and of that person, Martha Carrier....Through fictional recreations, Markham-Cantor brings to vivid life a sharp and independent woman, and how a community rallied around a crescendo of false accusations of her and others; and in passages detailing her own research journey, the author sets the destructive misogyny of that time in the wider context of witch trials before and since, in the United States and elsewhere. A compelling, eye-opening, and chilling read."" --Sylvia Brownrigg, author of The Whole Staggering Mystery"


"""This is the most vivid and accessible introduction to the world's most notorious witch trials that a newcomer is likely to find, and also a very timely warning for the present.""--Ronald Hutton, author of The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present ?""In this fascinating and powerful look at the story of one family caught up in the Salem witch trials, Alice Markham-Cantor performs a kind of literary magic, blending fact and fiction into a form perfectly suited to the troubling subject matter and the limits of the historical record. The exact truth of what happened to her ancestor Martha Carrier will never be known, but thanks to this indelible book, readers can imagine Martha's life and, alas, her death.""--Ann Packer, author of The Children's Crusade ""Through lively characters and fast paced-storytelling, Markham-Cantor transports us directly into the world of the Salem witch trials. The Once & Future Witch Hunt clearly shows that there is nothing exceptional about the conditions in which witch hunts arise. Rather, we see how the urge to blame, scapegoat, and other is all too typically human.""--Miranda Forsyth, director of the International Network Against Accusations of Witchcraft and Associated Harmful Practices"


Author Information

Alice Markham-Cantor is a writer and fact-checker from Brooklyn, New York. Her work has been published in New York Magazine, Scientific American, The Nation, and elsewhere. She serves on the working committee of the International Network Against Accusations of Witchcraft and Associated Harmful Practices (TINAAWAHP), and she spoke at the first and second Feminist Conferences on the Witch Hunts hosted by the Campaña por la Memoria de las Brujas in Spain. She is the writer and co-producer of A Witch Story, an award-winning documentary about Salem and her research. Rebecca Traister is an American author and journalist. Traister is a writer-at-large for New York magazine and its website The Cut, and she is a contributing editor at Elle magazine. Traister is the author of New York Times bestseller Good and Mad. Visit her at RebeccaTraister.com. ~Silvia Federici is a New York-based scholar, teacher, and feminist who wrote Caliban and the Witch. She is a professor emerita and teaching fellow at Hofstra University in New York State, where she was a social science professor. She also taught at the University of Port Harcourt in Nigeria. ~

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