In the Devil’s Snare, by Mary Beth Norton & The Salem Witch Trials, by Marilynne K. Roach

The early years of each decade seem to bring a new spate of books on the Salem witchcraft episode, as if to commemorate anew the tragic events that occurred in 1692-93. Beginning in January 1692 with the "affliction" of young girls--the daughter and niece of Salem Village's minister, Samuel Parris--the number of the bewitched grew, the search for witches and wizards spread, over 100 people were jailed, and a series of sensational and controversial trials ensued. Nineteen people were hanged and one pressed to death, with several more adults, children and infants dying in prison, in what has become a wrenching cautionary tale of complicity, pettiness and mass hysteria.

"Hysteria" has become integrally associated with Salem: thus the term "Salem witchcraft hysteria," which bespeaks the widespread interpretation of the events as originating in a mass delusion, a psychological aberration on a large scale. But this is only one of many interpretations put forward since the trials and executions.

Over the past century and a half historians and scholars of other disciplines have taken new approaches to the episode. Time and again, when it would seem that all that could be said had been said about Salem witchcraft, these new approaches have yielded fresh information and insight. To studies in psychology have been added studies in pediatrics and child-rearing, adolescent development and the "recovered memories" of abused juveniles. Medical and biological  explanations have been offered: the behavior of the accused conforms, it has been argued, to the symptoms of encephalitis, or could have been caused by ergot poisoning from contaminated grain.