Witch Hunt: History of a Persecution

While very informative, the books suffers in that Cawthorne cannot present any facts in an interesting manner, unless it is told from the point-of-view of an eyewitness (journal entries, letters, court testimony, etc.) While I'm grateful to see a book that concentrates on the European side of witch hunting, I'm sure a scan through the "Suggested Reading" in the back of the book will yield far more interesting accounts than this dreadful piece of non-fiction.

The European experience is talked about for the majority of the piece. Perhaps Cawthorne's intent was to focus on this and assume his readers are well-informed of the Salem witch trials. That being said, I don't think this is an excuse to focus on Salem for less than five pages.

The show more accounts that readers might not know of are, at best, presented in a lackluster manner, as they are simply stated briefly before moving on to another instance of witch hunting. As a result, one walks away from this book able to recall only the most graphic of witch hunts across Europe.

The book could be redeemed as a great source for researchers; in other words, if you're looking for a starting point for your own project, this might be a good place to begin. Actually, I should say it would be a good starting point if Cawthorne cited a single source. All we are given is the "Recommended Reads" in the back of the book, which I assume is a piss-poor excuse for a bibliography. The laziness of not citing comes off as lack of professionalism on the writer's part and the reader is forced to take everything stated with a grain of salt.

This lack of professionalism continues to be advanced upon the reader by the grammatical and spelling mistakes running rampant throughout the text. In fact, there are very few pages (if any) that are free from error. It boggled my mind how so many mistakes in structure and verb tense could exist in this book that I was forced to check the front of the book and verify that it had an editor. Amazingly, it did.

If you're casually interested in finding out more about the witch hunting craze, this might be informative; however, be cautious going in that it will be repetitive and boring. If you're more than just casually interested in the subject, I would do a little more research and find something better. It shouldn't be too hard. show less