The Specter of Salem: Remembering the Witch Trials in Nineteenth-Century America - Couverture souple

Adams, Gretchen A.

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0226005437 ISBN 13 : 9780226005430

Editeur : University of Chicago Press, 2010

Synopsis

In The Specter of Salem, Gretchen A. Adams reveals the many ways that the Salem witch trials loomed over the American collective memory from the Revolution to the Civil War and beyond. Schoolbooks in the 1790s, for example, evoked the episode to demonstrate the new nation's progress from a disorderly and brutal past to a rational present, while critics of new religious movements in the 1830s cast them as a return to Salem-era fanaticism, and during the Civil War, southerners evoked witch burning to criticize Union tactics. Shedding new light on the many, varied American invocations of Salem, Adams ultimately illuminates the function of collective memories in the life of a nation.

"Imaginative and thoughtful. . . . Thought-provoking, informative, and convincingly presented, The Specter of Salem is an often spellbinding mix of politics, cultural history, and public historiography."-- New England Quarterly

"This well-researched book, forgoing the usual heft of scholarly studies, is not another interpretation of the Salem trials, but an important major work within the scholarly literature on the witch-hunt, linking the hysteria of the period to the evolving history of the American nation. A required acquisition for academic libraries."--Choice, Outstanding Academic Title 2009

A propos du livre

À propos de l?auteur

Gretchen A. Adams is associate professor of history at Texas Tech University.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: University of Chicago Press
• Date d'édition: 2010
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0226005437
• ISBN 13: 9780226005430
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 240
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible