America Bewitched

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY MAR 18, 2013

Historian Davies (Magic: A Very Short Introduction) makes a strong case for the inefficacy of corporeal punishment in this tedious cultural history despite the judges' intentions, the 1692 executions in Salem, Mass., of 19 individuals accused of witchcraft did little to inhibit its development and evolution. Drawing upon stories from colonial times to today, Davies explores a number of topics related to wizardry such as how communities identified, dealt with, and legislated the supposed practice of sorcery and he offers up an intriguing social taxonomy of witches: "outsider witches," he explains, were pegged as such because of "where they lived, how they lived, and what they looked like"; "long-term personal feuds and unresolved tensions" led to scurrilous accusations of witchery and what Davies terms "conflict witches"; and the "accidental" type were "simply in the wrong place at the wrong time... or did or said something completely innocently but which subsequent misfortune rendered suspicious with hindsight." Over the years, the stigma surrounding witchcraft has dissipated: in the 19th century, many people placed horseshoes above the threshold of their houses to ward off evil, but today, proponents of Wicca are regarded as "benign and sympathetic" pagans. It has some compelling moments, but Davies's wearying survey adds little to the study of occultism in America. 20 illus.