Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Stacy Schiff Discusses Her Book "The Witches: Salem, 1692 "

Tue, 10/18/2016 - 4:40pm

When: October 17, 2016 at the Downtown Library Multi-Purpose Room

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Stacy Schiff discusses the Salem Witch Trials and her acclaimed book The Witches: Salem, 1692, which was selected as one of the best books of the year by Time, USA Today, NPR, The Washington Post, and several other publications. The story began in 1692, over an exceptionally raw Massachusetts winter, when a minister's daughter began to scream and convulse. It ended less than a year later, but not before 19 men and women had been hanged and a 75-year-old man crushed to death.

The panic spread quickly, involving the most educated men and prominent politicians in the colony. Neighbors accused neighbors, parents and children each other. Aside from suffrage, the Salem Witch Trials represent the only moment when women played the central role in American history. In curious ways, the trials would shape the future republic.

As psychologically thrilling as it is historically seminal, The Witches is the enduring American mystery unveiled fully by one of our most acclaimed historians. This event, scheduled just in time for Halloween, includes a book signing and books will be for sale, courtesy of Nicola’s Books.

Stacy Schiff is the author of the #1 bestseller Cleopatra: A Life, which won the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for biography; Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Saint-Exupéry, a Pulitzer Prize finalist; and A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, winner of the George Washington Book Prize.