Rating: 
Summary: Ultimately Unpersuasive
Review: "Salem Possessed" is a well researched but ultimately flawed account of the Witch trials of 1692. Boyer's and Nissenbaum's main contention is that the trials were a result of the animosity borne by the increasing bifurcation between Salem Village and Salem Town.
Specifically, as the Porter family in Salem gained in wealth, land and political influence, the Putnams (the main accusers in 1692) were hemmed in. The main nexus of envy, the authors argue, lay in the second marriage of Thomas Putnam to one Mary Veren. It was ultimately Mary Veren in 1695 that willed a vast majority of her estate to the Porters. One would think then that the main accusations of witchcraft would be leveled against the Porters or those closest to them. Instead, the main accusations were made against people geographically close to the Porters in the eastern part of the village. The authors attempt to explain away this incongruity by reading into the documents and supplanting hard evidence with imagined psychological motivations. For instance, the authors argue that the Putnam's rage was directed towards outsiders rather then Mary Putnam (Veren). This begs the question: Why were the accusations not leveled against the Porters and/or Mary Veren herself? The authors argue that the Putnams would not dare touch the Porters because of their high status, but why not when the stakes were so high as the authors have argued time and time again? This cannot be explained by simply a matter of `social deference.' That, in my opinion, is the ultimate failure of the book. If the witch trials were primarily an organized campaign against encroaching land-grabbing and commercialism, as the authors would have us believe, why accuse social outcasts? Although this book may suffice at the undergraduate level, at a higher level of academia it cannot stand up to very tough scrutiny. At the end of the day, it raises far to many questions then it does answers.
Rating: 
Summary: A fascinating, well documented, and comprehensive book!
Review: Boyer and Nissesnbaum's work on Salem is a fascinating look into the social stresses which were at the root of the explosion of accusations in this small Massachusetts town. Each of the elements in this disaster, i.e. the questionable ministerial skills of Samuel Parris, property disputes between the Proctors and Putnams, the conflicts between Salem Village and Salem Town, are thoughtfully analyzed as part of a whole. I higly reccomend this book for anyone wishing to have a deeeper understanding of the true causes of the Salem trials.
Rating:
Summary: An Example of Fine Research
Review: Finally, someone to take the hocus pocus out of this period of history and actually try to make some sense out of a sociological phenomenon gone wildly awry. While others relied on the tabloid type accounts of events left behind in court depositions, Nissenbaum and Boyer get into the nitty gritty to show you what really happened. Accessing Parris's sermons, wills, seemingly unrelated civil conflict court records, tax records, censuses, and more, this book starts from the beginning - the founding of Salem Village and takes you step by step through the most likely scenario of what really happened in this conflict in terms of personal power struggles, family legacies, societal conflicts between agrarian and commercial lifestyles and so on. This book also changed my perspective on the Puritan way of life and stirred my interest in the Great Awakening of 1751 which had similar outbreaks as the "spectral evidence" of Salem but was interpreted in a wholly different way.
Rating:
Summary: This is a Unique Work
Review: Given to me as a gift by a friend who didn't think it would be interesting, this book was one of the most fascinating I've ever read. If you find sociology interesting, or if you have worked in a "groupthink" environment, you will find this book very insightful and thought-provoking.
However, this book will be most enjoyed when the reader comes without preconceived expectations and accepts the book for what it is: a comprehensively-researched presentation of the writers' perspective and hypothesis on the subject.
The language is a bit "steep" for the general population and may best be enjoyed as a leisurely read and not as required reading as in the case of a university course.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, thorough book
Review: I was actually assigned this book for an anthropology class, but I couldn't put it down. Boyer and Nissenbaum look at every possible contributing factor to the witch craze that took hold of Salem in the late 17th century. They are careful to present all of the data upon which they based their hypotheses, allowing the reader to judge the validity of their claims. Salem Possessed provides an enlightening look at the pressures (social, economic, religious) that affected all of the villagers, and manages not to vilify any particular person.This book's strength is it's thoroughness, but it is also it's major drawback. It can be difficult to keep track of all the names, households and dates. However, it is well worth the effort, and I heartily recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Book!
Review: I was assigned this book for my Anthropology Class. I am actually a History major, and I often find anthropological readings boring, this book is interesting because it combines anthropological look at society and historical research and interpretation. It was easy to read, and engaging from the very beginning.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent research and insight
Review: I was required to read this book in my college freshman expository literature class and it was recently brought to my attention again as I watched an innocent person get accused and abused for something they did not do, and I must say that this is one of the only sociological studies that has stayed with me all these years. This book is proof that we must learn from history or stand condemned to repeat it. It is bizarre how the early settlers operated and how there was no true separation of church and State, blame abounded if someone had a seizure. Evidence shows that ergot poisioning led the the sympotmatic behavior of the poor class of females who mostly ate the rye bread, etc. and how society, with it's fearmonging idiocy was more readily willing to blame some psychotic make-believe of "being a witch" on those poor girls than of using their brains and finding a scientific explanation. It's hard to tell who was more nuts... the people with ergot poisoning or the clergy making the ridiculous judgements! I was blown out of the water when I read how a woman with a hemerroid was thought to have a "witches teat" that they believed she nursed secret witches and goblins at night from (talk about disgusting beliefs) and how these poor ladies were dunked, hanged, shot, be-headed because of a naturally occurring blood vessel protruding from [...]after child birth! Good God, I'm glad they didn't have truck drivers back then because they have the most hemerroids of any sector of the population! Can you just see all these guys at the witch trial having to bend over and moon the court and then be taken out to the pond and dunked repeatedly till they fessed up to being a witch or killed??!!! All you have to do is read this book and you can see, even today, in your own circle of society how there are still [people]like this running around rampant.
Rating:
Summary: Worth a read - with caution
Review: Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum's Salem Possessed - The Social Origins of Witchcraft has long been recognized as one of several standard texts for university level classes on the subject. The authors view Salem as a specific and perhaps hyperbolic extension of the world-wide socio-economic tensions occasioned by the rise of Mercantile Capitalism (209). Specifically, they postulate that the growth of political-religious factionalism within Salem Village was due primarily to causes beyond local control; and that, when combined with the inopportune convergence of certain chance factors (such as long lasting intra-family feuds and the debate over the church) and personalities (such as Parris, Putnam and Porter), resulted in the collective abreaction of social tensions we now know as the Salem Witchcraft Episode (178, 191). Salem Possessed is a logical, extremely readable, and seemingly well researched book. However, a closer examination of both the focus and methodology may be in order.
It will be readily admitted that a definition of the term "social history" remains ambiguous. There are, however, certain basic expectations a historian expects to have fulfilled by any worked labeled so, among them: explanations concerning the broad socio-political background leading to a specific event; how the effects of this background narrow in focus and relate to the local event; how the event itself impacts various effected segments of society; and how these segments themselves view and/or react to the event. The specific focus chosen by Boyer and Nissenbaum fail to fulfill the great majority of these expectation.
It is a specific contention of the authors that the social environment of Salem accurately reflected the contemporary antagonism between larger social, political and economic forces (179-81, 209). However, the excessively narrow focus of the work would belie such an assertion. Little or no mention is made of the impact of the Restoration of the Stuarts and Britain's subsequent political-economic "Reach for Empire", or the resultant development of mercantile capitalism and the rise of the merchant group. Such omissions are all the more telling because it is the implicit ideological conflict between capitalist merchants and a declining Puritan oligarchy which provide the framework of local factionalism upon which Boyer and Nissenbaum center their research.
In addition, although it is a commonly held belief that the Salem witch trials were - at least in part - an extension of the widespread European witch hunts of 1500-1700, no mention of these precedent setting events is made. In fact, little attention is paid to contemporary perceptions of witchcraft whether European or Colonial.
A third and perhaps even more directly applicable topic passed over by the authors is the role of gender. Why, for example, are most of the postulated causes primarily, if not exclusively, male concerns, such as the payment of taxes, control of the village council, and service in the Salem Town Watch? This is especially confusing when one considers that a great majority of both afflicted and accused were female. From a broader perspective, the authors totally disregard the possible social (not to mention misognistic) complications arising from a patriarchal society which singles out and condemns a sizable percentage of their own womenfolk. These lapses alone serve to relegate the book to the less ambitious ranks of a local - rather than a truly "social" - history.
A second and equally grievous criticism concerns the authors' selective but obviously calculated use of post ipso facto psychological methods to compensate when - and wherever purely historical methods appear insufficient. Rather than admitting that perhaps we just don't know exactly why people act and react they way they do, Boyer and Nissenbaum attempt convoluted psychoanalytical explanations which the objective observer must label conjecture, at best. The inappropriate nature of such techniques when applied at a chronological distance of over 280 years becomes especially obvious in Chapter 7 where the psychological portrait provided describes Pastor Samuel Parris as an insecure (169) paranoid (170) and self-hating (177) obsessive-compulsive (167) megalomaniac who compares himself to Christ (169), yet such a characterization directly contradicts the later portrait of Parris as the "representative [i.e., typical] man of his time".
It also seems that Salem Possessed exhibits at least one consistently identifiable bias, that being the authors' rather obvious disparaging treatment of capitalism. Far from being the harbinger of modernity which supplanted an oppressive and antiquated Puritan world-view, capitalism is characterized as "the lure which menaced the village" (101), "a looming moral threat" (105), a "violation of much that is contained in the word 'Puritan'" (106), and as responsible for "many disputes and difficulties" (102). Even acquiescing the fact that total objectivity is impossible, one would assume Boyer and Nissenbaum could have at least done a better job of camouflaging their own 1960's liberal academic backgrounds.
Finally, for a work in which a large portion of the text deals with such verifiable data as demographics and family relationships, Boyer and Nissenbaum seem to depend rather excessively upon secondary sources. For example, of the fifty-seven total references cited in the first ten pages of the book, only seventeen were original records. This imbalance becomes all the more glaring when one takes into account the authors' own statements concerning the comparatively large amount of primary documentation available on the subject (x - xi).
In sum, it must be admitted that Salem Possessed does have its merits. It is well written with an easy to follow style. The extensive research and clarity of expression evidenced in sections dealing specifically with local factionalism are impressive. And Boyer and Nissenbaum's ability to translate complex relationships into readable prose is entertaining, if not always one hundred percent accurate. Unfortunately, the authors not only utilize inappropriate and unsubstantiated psychological interpretations to support their primary socio-historic focus, but they fail to place this focus within a larger world-historical framework. In fact, they seem to leave out almost as much as they cover, a trait that considerably lowers the overall quality and usefulness of the work.
Rating:
Summary: More Than Just Simple Accusations!
Review: Salem Possessed aimed at shedding new light on the Salem Witchcraft Trails of 1692 by providing new detail and insight into the social and political origins of the paranoia and fears felt by those in and around Salem Village. By using such detailed and effective primary sources, the authors were able to create a vivid image of the situation Salem Village was in, and how the emergent mercantile capitalism was mistaken by those as a threat of witchcraft. Introducing us to the two "rival clans", the Porters and the Putnams, as well as the key role of the minister Samuel Parris, the authors of Salem Possessed used statistical and empirical data to show how the clashing of these distinct people, and their distinctive ways of life, led to a crescendo in 1692 that allowed for the hanging of innocent people. The authors sum up the book by portraying the events of 1692 as an "obsession with outsiders", showing that the difference in proximity to Salem Town, financial standing, land holding, and taxable property was more than many "pro-Parris" Villagers could stand to sit idly aside and watch fluctuate sporadically. Overall, Salem Possessed is effective in erasing the stereotypes involved with the Salem Witch Trials by using concrete evidence, primary accounts, and statistical data that hint at a very evident pattern in the growing chasm between the pro-Parris, religious Puritans, and the capitalistic, wealthy Villagers who had stronger ties to Salem Town than the Village itself.
Rating:
Summary: Well done
Review: This book does as good a job as any I've ever seen in explaining what happened at Salem and why. The authors make an excellent case for their sociological theory.
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