John Demos (1)Reviews

I don't love this the way I love Demos's The Unredeemed Captive, but it is still a well-written and insightful work of history, and filled with great set-pieces. I particularly recommend the sections dealing with the death of Henry Obookiah and with Elias Boudinot's courtship of Harriet Gold. (I would love to read a biography of Elias Boudinot or of John Ridge, whom Demos really brings to life in this book.)

I don't love this the way I love Demos's The Unredeemed Captive, but it is still a well-written and insightful work of history, and filled with great set-pieces. I particularly recommend the sections dealing with the death of Henry Obookiah and with Elias Boudinot's courtship of Harriet Gold. (I would love to read a biography of Elias Boudinot or of John Ridge, whom Demos really brings to life in this book.)

It is hard to believe a book about witch hunts could be so incredibly dry and boring.

The last chapter, about "modern witch hunts," is highly problematic as he addresses topics in a few pages that have had their own whole tomes written (Red Scare, McCarthyism, Satanic child abuse in day cares scare). As a result, all nuance is lost and even the accuracy of some claims seemed questionable.

Much better books have been written on this topic. Look elsewhere.

Where I got the book: review copy provided by publisher. This review first appeared on the Historical Novel Society website.

The intersection of the idealism, religious fervor, and experimentation of the early American republic with 19th-century racism provides the context for this account of the Connecticut-based Foreign Mission School, known locally as the Heathen School. Its core population was made up of Hawaiian men brought to America by the China trade and of Native American youths; its purpose was to educate and ‘civilize’ them so they could return to their point of origin as missionaries.

The hopes of the school’s founders were gradually eroded by the difficulties of assimilating its students into a white society ill-prepared to ascribe full manhood or citizenship to them. The culminating scandals concerned the marriages of Cherokees John Ridge and Elias Boudinot to white women, leading to a shift toward taking missionary endeavors into the field.

The Heathen School provides a good account of the evolution of thought from early American willingness to intermarry with and assimilate native populations to the outright fear and prejudice of the mid-19th century. Its quirky presentation—with travelogues and extensive chapters on background matters and later developments—and its overuse of quotation marks and parentheses hinder the story, but there are many points of interest.

I don't know if I'll finish this one. After all, how many explicit instances does one need to read about before one understands the implicit principle?

***

It's official: I'm not going to finish it.

"....The American side of witchcraft study has also been reinvigorated...."

*rolls eyes* If only.

Now, when I pick up a book like this, the first thing that I think is: it might make Montague Summers smile.

*Hugh Laurie voice* 'It might make him smile.'

So there's that.

Also, when dealing with the persecution, I rather prefer stuff that isn't anti-craft, and there's alot of that, not least among the "sympathetic" crap.

And it's true that this is something of an improvement over, say, "Harry Potter and History", or even "The Crucible", (with Daniel Day-Lewis from "The Last of the Mohicans"!), in a way, but....

I don't know; it's easy to talk about nothing. In anything like this, there's bound to be alot about clergy and stuff, that might make Marxists smile--

'It might make them smile'

.... if they even bother to care, which is not entirely a given. To them, even "The Crucible" about the 50s. The awful, *awful* 50s, back when *zero* witches were executed in England, and last Witchcraft Act was taken *off* the statute-books....

And, yeah, there's alot of stuff before 1951, sure.

I'm sure that I went through at least one or two books about this sort of thing, before I found this one, which at least rises to a certain level of mediocrity.... not unlike the 50s!

*'It's like a ray of sunshine, on a cloudy day.'*

(50s magazine: "Marriage is fun!" Space-age witch: *shrugs* Juno is my friend.)

.... It's just, so much about what, sometimes. So easy to write a book about the clergy, basically....

I don't know. It's a little scatter-brained and weird, at times. So much, just for the paper, and the ink.

*still Hugh Laurie voice* 'They could build, monuments, to your self-centeredness.'

And Heaven knows that there have never been any *inside sources* that were scatter-brained and weird....

And, without trying to make it sound like I'm tossing the ball to-- "Sunday Bloody Sunday with Daniel Day-Lewis"!-- there are some stories that can only be told from the inside....

From the outside, it's just....

Scatter-brained and weird, basically.

'But I would also like a chapter about doctors. If you can talk about Cotton Mather, then why not me?'

'Who da man? I da man'

'Oh snap.'

So, yeah. It's scatter-brained and weird. *But very neat*.

But I suppose that at an appropriate level of abstraction, it all makes sense.

{Scatter-brained, weird, scholar. *clapclapclap*}

....

Seriously.

In books like this, the preface is always the personal bit, I think....

But after that, it's usually pretty inconsiderate, and even careless, that skeptic's rudeness, you know, it sorta defaults to that....

".... with some indie record that's much cooler than mine...."

So that's disappointing.

Because even when they're not writing monographs, it's always.... I don't know. Milton Friedman's writing is somewhat better than most 'technical'-- in the broad sense, you know-- writing, but, I don't know.... I just get tired of it being like I'm listening to my brother's friend (whom I call) Matrix....

So that's disappointing.

So, yeah, I think that we're finally through, Clio.

"We, are never ever ever, getting back together....

You go to talk to your friends talk to my friends, talk to me....

We, are never ever ever, getting back together...."

And if you want to know about the persecution, if you want to know the truth, you ought to just go to listen "Bloodied Yet Unbowed", by Primordial.

{Mercury, that's funny, but it's still true....}

(7/10)½

A very solid history of witchcraft in America. In spite of the subtitle, the first 1600+ years of witch hunting are only lightly treated. Most of the focus of the book is on American witch hunting. The author does do a reasonably thorough treatment of the most famous, the Salem witch trials, but spends a good deal of time on earlier (and a few later) trials and "panics", as well. He is an entertaining writer, able to bring personality to the individuals involved, rather than just a dry recitation of details. He wraps up the account by looking at some more modern day "witch hunts", and evaluating where they converge and where they diverge from traditional witch hunts. Overall, an enjoyable read and a valuable history lesson.½

Looking back from the vantage point of the world today, it seems almost inconceivable that such things as witch-crazes and mass witch-hunting could still occur and the fact that they did occur is often puzzling. Yet if we delve a little deeper at what witch-hunting truly means and its role in society, it becomes clear that not only is it imaginable but also that it could reappear at any time. Witch-hunting is not simply the hunting of witches; it is the ousting of the other in our midst and the affirmation of what the current culture deems appropriate and desirable. Viewed in this way, we can see modern day examples of witches and their hunters by another name.

John Demos, a renowned history scholar, is particularly well-suited to process and synthesize the history of knowledge on witch-hunting and the more recent incarnations of the practice. Hunting witches, he tells readers, begins closest to home, and accusers are often neighbors of the accused. In a way, to designate someone as a witch is a simple way to call attention to their behaviors that are undesirable. To execute them is to execute that behavior found offensive.

The author chronicles the history of witch-hunting through this lens of extracting the other and establishing standards of society, and it becomes increasingly clear how these hunts and executions could have happened. After the Enlightenment, we may have moved away from using the term witch to castigate, but the practice of hunting down and ousting remains in many forms to the present time. Demos illustrates his point through more modern day hunts of the Freemasons, Bavarian Illuminati, Haymarket activism, the Great Red Scare, McCarthyism, and child sex-abuse cases. In the witch-hunting cases of the past as well as with the more modern examples, there are recurring themes that emerge that help us to make sense of these incidents: conspiracy, secrecy, large scope, fundamentally subversive ends, hidden contaminating means, apocalyptic danger, and negative emotional repercussions.

Very accessible and thought-provoking history of our tendency across centuries to create scapegoats--even when the danger is purely imaginary. In his attempt to make the book accessible to mainstream history fans, Demos may have made his scope a little too broad and too general. The middle section, which focuses on the New England witch trials, and Salem in particular, is almost TOO detailed, with a surplus of factual detail compared to analysis. The final section, which traces the witch-hunting mentality through the next four centuries often feels very rushed on the detail-level. Still, the book is well worth reading, if only for the excellent comparison of the Salem witch trials to the Fells Acres Day School trials four hundred years later.

Good scholarship of the early colonial period witch-hunts, bookended by earlier and later witch hunts. The precedents in European witchcraft that Demos explores are good and add to understanding its transfer to American shores, but the later chapters on modern "witch hunts" are less satisfying. There are big jumps between incidents and Demos' work in these areas seems preliminary and not as intimate as his work with events like the Salem trials.

Having spent most of my life in Massachusetts, I have always been fascinated by witch trials (Salem) and the psychology behind the persecution of witches. This book doesn't address actual witchcraft but instead delves into that very psychology. The author's research is meticulous, his writing clear and easy to follow. The book isn't dragged out and I found no part of it in the least bit boring. I would suggest this book to anyone with an interest in the history and psychology behind witch hunts.

The Enemy Within was a huge disappointment after reading Demos's Entertaining Satan. It feels like Demos tried to "dump" a large quantity of scholarly work into a a product that would appeal to the masses. I found the breadth of this work too broad and the depth too shallow.

As a newbie to all of this witchcraft stuff (the only book I’ve read with “Crucible” in the title was about the Bauhaus) I found this book quite engaging. Of course these days I find anything within the genre of NOT Architecture engaging (barring, of course, the Kaplan study guides for the Architectural Registration Exams. These definitely fall under the NOT Architecture category, but they’re about as engaging as invasive colonoscopy). To me this was a consistently interesting read – a page turner even – and I guess my only criticism revolves around what I sensed to be a forced inclusion of such “modern” episodes as the anti-Free Mason initiative and even the “witch hunting” during the two main Red Scares. The example of the daycare scandals of the mid 80s to early 90s, his main contemporary comparison to the sundry “pre-modern” witch trials, did seem a relevant inclusion for a book that purports to weave a narrative of witch-hunting regardless of actual alleged “witches” over that last 2,000 years.

I suppose my feeling is that, as everything post-Salem is condensed into the last quarter of the book, he undermines his objective a bit. Indeed one might flippantly counter that the last 300 years should technically only fill 15% of a book covering two millennia to create a balanced portrayal. But at base, Demos attempts to establish how the chronologically and geographically sporadic, yet fundamentally consistent pattern of “pre-modern” witch-hunting also emerges in various non-clergy-induced “modern” forms. Because of brevity I think he falls short. However, as the somewhat annoying, italicized questions concluding each contemporary example never failed to disrupt the flow (”So…was it a witch-hunt…the missing parts are, as before, misogyny and overtly religious/moral sponsorship…” So…maybe?), perhaps too much speculative equivalencies would have pushed his star rating from 4 to 2.25. I dunno, I liked the book overall.

We are all familiar with the national myth of the Pilgrim story: the Mayflower landing on Plymouth Rock, their encounters with Squanto, and Thanksgiving. But how much do we know about the Pilgrims as people, their relationships with each other both within the context of the family and community? John Demos, a professor of history at Yale University, wrote the classic account of Plymouth family life in 1970, and with its' reissue we can examine anew the significance of his scholarship in extending our understanding of this important subject.
The overlaying dynamic of Pilgrim life, according to Demos, was that it was a patriarchal society (82). Like many societies (arguably including our own), the male ruled both the household and the community. "The proper attitude of a wife toward her husband was 'a reverend subjection'" (83). With few exceptions (88-90), husbands had full control over their homes and businesses; indeed they were even able to dispose and assign their children to other households with little to no consultation with their wives (88).
Demos' most interesting argument concerns the dynamic that served to keep the community (and family) together as a cohesive unit: repression. When one thinks of Puritan repression, one thinks of sexual repression; indeed, it is almost an accepted stereotype. But it seems that repression was instead directed at actions committed by members of the community, especially those actions that could be characterized as hostile or aggressive (136-137). Demos uses that psychological framework of Erik Erikson (outlined 138-139) to explain how the repression of impulses (especially individualistic impulses) was institutionalized within the Puritan family, and how its consequence (shame) became a defining characteristic of Pilgrim life (139). Children were "broken," their individuality destroyed, so that they met the expectation of obedience to authority, whether it be obedience to their father or obedience to the government (134-135). A child's "stubbornness" is broken; he is now able to develop into a model God-fearing Pilgrim (135).
While it is difficult for historians to fully understand such a nebulous concept as 'family life' even within the context of the recent past, it is doubly difficult to ascertain relationships that occurred within the distant past. This is because what was considered normal within the community was seldom documented; there was little reason to record what everyone already knew and understood. Demos makes a valiant effort to reconstruct these relationships by examining physical artifacts, wills, court decisions, and estate inventories. While his account of Pilgrim life is necessarily incomplete, his evidence allows us to begin to understand the dynamics at work. While his evidence (especially court cases) might serve merely to show the exceptions to the rule, enough of this evidence exists to demonstrate what the expected norm might be.
It appears that Demos attempted to examine all major dynamics at work within the family—relationships between family members—but by necessity he merely outlined these relations in broad strokes. It might have been desirable to present a case study of one particular family, following its development and changes through time. Enough evidence may exist to provide a more in depth look at one family; such an exercise might serve to increase our understanding of the relations within an 'average' Puritan household.
It appears, however, that Demos has provided us a valuable glimpse into the Pilgrim family life that, while incomplete, gives a sense of how things were. There are few silences in the narrative of family life (such as the daily life and play of children), but these may be unavoidable. In the end, it appears that Pilgrim family life was as complex (if not more so) than family life today.

Good survey of domestic life in the 17th century Old Colony. Surprisingly, takes a bit of a detour from the documentary record to connect the topic to the psychology of Erikson.

Distinguished Yale historian John Demos tries his hand at popular history with The Enemy Within: 2,000 Years of Witch-Hunting in the Western World (just out from Viking). In his preface, Demos calls this a "broad-gauge summary and synthesis of the entire subject," noting "synthesis itself was an unfamiliar process for me. I have previously made my way as a historian of very specific times, places, and events. My aim in all my other projects has been depth more than breadth. Those priorities are reversed here; the coverage is nothing if not broad."

That's certainly true. In four large sections, Demos examines various phases of witchcraft history and witch-hunting: Europe in the early modern era, the American colonies prior to Salem, the Salem events themselves, and America in modern times. Each of those sections contains a broad overview chapter, bookended by vignettes focusing on specific cases, characters, or objects (Cotton Mather and Rebecca Nurse or profiled, for example, as is the Malleus Maleficarum).

Through the first three segments of the book, Demos is on firm ground as he surveys the general trends in witch-hunting across the centuries through the crisis at Salem. His historiographical analysis of that phenomenon is fascinating, although it suffered much from the lack of scholarly apparatus in the text (just because a book is being written for a popular audience doesn't mean it can't have footnotes, I say, for the umpteenth time - or at least a thorough bibliography).

In the final section, Demos extends the witch-hunting metaphor to the present day, testing various possible "witch-hunts" (the Anti-Masonic movement, the Red Scare, McCarthyism, &c.) against its criteria to see which fit. As final chapters often do, this part of the book seemed forced and somewhat strained: even Demos admits that not all of his examples work well. His conclusions, at least, do work: for all that the reality of witches may be more "fictive than actual," the psychological impulses at the root of witch-hunting are "all too real. More than anything else," he concludes, "this constitutes the enemy which has through the centuries exacted such a terrible toll. To reduce its power is no easy task. Yet by deepening knowledge of both self and society, we create at least an opening for change. To that most important process 'history' offers its own hopeful, if uncertain, contribution."

Like Demos as a writer, as a reader I tend to prefer narrower studies to works of broad synthesis - I think much of my (minor) discomfort with this book stems directly from that mindset. That said, this is fundamentally a strong book, by one of the foremost authorities in witchcraft scholarship. I think it does just what it's meant to do.

http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2008/09/book-review-enemy-within.html

This is an attempt to explore family life specifically in the Plymouth Colony, the Old Colony, as opposed to the Massachusetts colony or Puritans as a whole. As such, I think it is more of a specialist book than one of general interest. It is very nicely written. Demos discusses the evidence with the reader, instead of leaning on authoritarian statements. The reader is thus both informed of Demos' opinion, and able to reach their own conclusions. Demos has pulled out some interesting primary sources, include a rare census, diaries, writings by early settlers, etc.½