North Andover: "A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience"

Professor Emerson Baker returns again this fall to discuss his newest book, “A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience”

Focusing on the key players in the Salem witchcraft crisis—the accused witches and the people they allegedly bewitched, as well as the judges and government officials who prosecuted them—Emerson Baker illuminates why the tragedy unfolded as it did. He shows how the Puritan government’s attempts to suppress what had taken place only fueled the popular imagination, and established the trials as a turning point from Puritan communalism to Yankee independence. He also sets the trials in the broader context of American history from the 1620s up through the present, and reveals the ways their legacy remains with us.

Emerson “Tad” Baker is a professor of History and former dean of the Graduate School at Salem State University. He is the award-winning author of many works on the history and archaeology of early Maine and New England, including The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft and Conflict in Early New England. He has served as an advisor for PBS-TV’s American Experience and Colonial House and has appeared in many documentaries on the Salem witch trials. Baker received his BA from Bates College, his MA from the University of Maine, and his Ph.D. in History from William and Mary. He tweets on the Salem witch trials and early New England history @EmersonWBaker.

Copies will be available for sale at this event.

Seating is limited, reservations to director.nahistory@gmail.com are required.

More art and history events can be found at the Museum Calendar.