Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England »

Carol F. Karlsen is professor of history at the University of Michigan.

"A pioneer work in . . . the sexual structuring of society. This is not just another book about witchcraft."—Edmund S. Morgan, Yale University

Library Journal

Karlsen has written an intriguing social history of witchcraft in Puritan New England (1620-1725). She unearths detailed evidence which demonstrates that prosecuted and accused witches generally were older, married women who had violated the religious and/or economic Puritan social hierarchy. Beyond their childbearing years and sometimes the recipients of inheritances, these women threatened the male-dominated social order and drew the ire of middle-aged men who accused them of witchcraft. A well-written, provocative addition to the recent scholarship on New England witchcraft.David Szatmary, Univ. of Washington Extension, Seattle