Witchy Woman - Salem 1692

We think we know a lot about American history. About the events that shaped the formation of the republic. And while that knowledge might get you an audition for Jeopardy, at its roots sometimes, it's also true that everything we think we know is wrong.

Essentially what that means, and maybe it's even a factor in what’s gone so wrong today, is that we tend to know only surface. That when we drill down to historical events, only then do we find that the facts, the nuances, the subtlety and the psychology are what really matters. This is what
really makes up the historical ripples we are living with today.

This is the story of the Salem Witch Trials, as told now by Pulitzer Prize winning historian Stacy Schiff.  She won the Pulitzer for her book Cleopatra, and now she pivots to 1692 Salem to bring us The Witches: Salem, 1692

Cleopatra

In her time she was the most powerful woman in the Western World. She was not afraid to use her feminine powers in ways that today, would be considered politically incorrect. She was highly educated and sophisticated, the richest woman of her time and her story wold be the subject of propaganda and revisionism. She was Cleopatra and although her story takes place over two thousand years ago, many of her life themes are as contemporary as today’s headlines.  Pulitzer Prize winning biographer Stacy Schiff's best selling biography Cleopatra: A Life captures it all as if she were there.

My conversation with Stacy Schiff:

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