The Ruin of All Witches
Life and Death in the New World
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The Ruin of All Witches
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Narrated by:
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Kristin Atherton
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By:
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Malcolm Gaskill
About this listen
Brought to you by Penguin.
A Time, Sunday Times and BBC History History Book of the Year 2021
In the frontier town of Springfield, in 1651, peculiar things begin to happen. Precious food spoils, livestock ails and property vanishes. People suffer fits and are plagued by strange visions and dreams. Children sicken and die. As tensions rise, rumours spread of witches and heretics, and the community becomes tangled in a web of spite, distrust and denunciation. The finger of suspicion falls on a young couple struggling to make a home and feed their children: Hugh Parsons, the irascible brickmaker, and his troubled wife, Mary. It will be their downfall.
The Ruin of All Witches tells the dark real-life folktale of witch-hunting in a remote Massachusetts plantation. These were the turbulent beginnings of colonial America, when English settlers' dreams of love and liberty, of founding a 'city on a hill', gave way to paranoia and terror, enmity and rage. Drawing on uniquely rich, previously neglected source material, Malcolm Gaskill brings to life a New World existence steeped in the divine and the diabolic, in curses and enchantments, and precariously balanced between life and death.
Through the gripping micro-history of a family tragedy, we glimpse an entire society caught in agonised transition between supernatural obsessions and the age of enlightenment. We see, in short, the birth of the modern world.
©2022 Malcolm Gaskill (P)2022 Penguin AudioCritic reviews
"A bona fide historical classic." (Sunday Times)
"Simply one of the best history books I have ever read." (BBC History)
"A great story, exquisitely told. This book is history at its illuminative best." (The Times)
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What listeners say about The Ruin of All Witches
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Madeleine
- 06-11-23
Personally, I really enjoyed it.
While I understand how some other reviewers might have found it a bit dense, I really enjoyed it. I especially enjoyed the author's effort to put the reader in the headspace of people of the time period.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- D
- 12-24-22
Lost the will to live
Excellent preface with intresting commentary on the state of religion and law at the bridge from the medieval to the modern age. But after that the author essentially narrates what feels like every mundane event in the life of a number of characters in a new world settlement. I lost the will to live after 4 hours, but maybe others will get more from it.
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