Witchcraft

A History in Thirteen Trials

By: Marion Gibson

Narrated by: Rose Akroyd

National Bestseller
A New Yorker Best Book of 2024

A “thought-provoking and timely” (The Times, London) global history of witch trials across Europe, Africa, and the Americas, told through thirteen distinct trials that illuminate a pattern of demonization and conspiratorial thinking that has profoundly shaped human history.

This “inventive and compelling” (The Times Literary Supplement, London) work of social history travels through thirteen witch trials across history, some famous—like the Salem witch trials—and some lesser-known: on Vardø island, Norway, in the 1620s, where an indigenous Sami woman was accused of murder; in France in 1731, during the country’s last witch trial, where a young woman was pitted against her confessor and cult leader; in Lesotho in 1948, where British colonial authorities executed local leaders. Exploring how witchcraft was feared, then decriminalized, and then reimagined as gendered persecution, Witchcraft takes on the intersections between gender and power, indigenous spirituality and colonial rule, political conspiracy and individual resistance.

Offering a striking, dramatic journey unspooling over centuries and across continents, Witchcraft is a “well-rounded insight into some of the strangest and cruelest moments in history” (Buzz Magazine), giving voice to those who have been silenced by history.

©2024 Marion Gibson (P)2024 Simon & Schuster Audio

Good in-depth story

Research well-documented and presented in an engaging way. Appreciated the linking with today’s ongoing challenges.

Fascinating Throughout

This was fascinating all the way through to the end. I learned a lot about some of the people accused of being witches, about witch trials, and about cultural changes that happened around witch trials.

The final chapter about the witch hun’s of Stormy Daniels, president Donald Trump, and Judge Bret Kavanaugh

I find persecution of all these personalities, based on specious evidence to be most distasteful. That this still occurs with false accusations for political purposes both today and for at least a thousand years in the past shows how superstitious and vengeful our society remains.

Fascinating history

Well-researched and read extremely well. This book looks at specific witch trials and why/how they occurred. We get to know much more about the witches and the witch hunters than most books provide. The book ends with the present day, which was a surprise to me, but presented well. A fine history.

7 Centuries or More!

well read. fascinating. definitely worth the credit. such a great book. they didn't burn witches. they burned women.

Clever and Current

The thirteen trials provided details and perspectives not found in traditional historical accounts. The author made clear connections between past and present along the way so the themes carried through nicely. The last two trials were shocking and revelatory! Satisfying and startlingly relevant account of how culture impacts human nature and can turn on itself without us even noticing.

Very Interesting

This is an informative text that traces the rekindling in the west of the belief in Witchcraft (during most of the Middle Ages it was considered unChristian to believe in witches). The mechanism that Gibson uses to do this is to lay out the trials of accused witches and look at what arguments have been made against the witches and how the attitude towards witches changes. She comes to the same conclusion that most scholars of the subject have—witch trials usually targeted independent women who often used traditional means of treating ills.

Perhaps most interesting is the ways in which the idea of the witch changes. It’s a very interesting book that is well worth reading. However, I thought that the final chapter focusing on Stormy Daniels and Donald Trump missed a big opportunity. The McMartin Preschool Trials in the U.S. during the 1980s would have fit in much better. In that case, the teachers in a preschool were charged with witchcraft, Satanism, and sexual abuse despite massive problems with the evidence. The hysteria surrounding the case is shocking when one considers that most Americans believe that actual witch trials are relics of the long ago past.

Detailed and scholarly exploration of witches through history

Very well organized and thoroughly researched. The social and political context helped to make the women and men involved in the trials come to life. I especially enjoyed how the previous trials provided a foundation for understanding the last example discussed.

Witches were never the real danger.

A great breakdown of how Witchcraft has been defined, identified, categorized, attacked and punished for centuries. More often then not, it came down to men attacking women whose otherness, spirituality, intelligence and sexuality, offended their sensitive, puny, and fearful minds. The mob-mentality also went a long way toward punishing those who didn’t deserve it, and this book demonstrates how long it took to put a stop to that behavior in our modernizing society, and how easily we can still fall into the pit of attacking otherness when scared and powerful people tell us to.

Well-researched history anthology with a clear thesis

Not only is it perfectly illustrated that Western culture was conducting absolutely disgusting miscarriages of justice long before (and including) the Salem Witch Trials, but Gibson goes even further to show that the shocking persecution of people (especially women) utilizing witch trials continues in the modern day.
It is evident that Gibson wanted to tell the individual backstories of the accused, and treat them for what they are: victims of corruption. Part true crime anthology, part cautionary social tale, and part scandalous historical tell-all; Gibson's Witchcraft [...] is an engaging history of witch hunts at the hands of an unjust and corrupt Christendom. Perhaps a tad academic for some audiences, I (personally) found it to be a well-researched history anthology with a clear thesis regarding modern morality.