New Books In Religion

Today’s book is: Witchcraft: A History in 13 Trials (Scribner, 2024), by Dr. Marion Gibson, which explores the 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. Some of them are famous like the Salem witch trials, and some lesser-known, like the 1620s witch trial on Vardø island, Norway, where an indigenous Sami woman was accused of murder; the last witch trial in France in 1731, where a young woman was pitted against her confessor and cult leader; and a trial 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 o