I started this book because a friend had tried it and abandoned it early on. It is not your traditional sensational account of the Salem witch trials of 1692. Did Schiff explain the proliferation of witchcraft accusations?, she asked me. Not really. Did she talk about hysteria?, she questioned. Well, a little at the end. What Stacy Schiff does so wonderfully is recreate the world of late 17th-century New England, with its political intrigue, its petty grievances, its religious intolerance, and it’s justifiable fears of the French and local Native Americans, who brutally fought back against the interlopers, all of which helped to contribute to the teens’ accusations. The book is rife with Salem’s claustrophobia and boredom and jealousies. Ultimately, she holds the colony’s leaders responsible for their mishandling of what might otherwise have been a passing fancy on the part of teens looking for attention or excitement or power; most of the trial justices also help themselves responsible with the clarity of hindsight. Schiff wrings every bit of meaning out of the documents to create an intense sense of the world the Puritans lived in and how it contributed to the tragedies of 1692.