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45 reviews for:
How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women
Claire Mitchell, Zoe Venditozzi
4.35 AVERAGE
45 reviews for:
How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women
Claire Mitchell, Zoe Venditozzi
4.35 AVERAGE
challenging
informative
challenging
funny
informative
fast-paced
This book explores the history of the Scottish Witch Trials and gives voice to one of the largest if not the largest witch hunt in history. The book discusses themes of feminism, patriarchy, oppression, and the historical justice systems as well as ideas of power and privilege. The book draws parallels to the world of today and the fight that women are still fighting.
I found the book interesting and thought provoking and enjoyed the use of Scots and Scottish Gaelic throughout the book!
I found the book interesting and thought provoking and enjoyed the use of Scots and Scottish Gaelic throughout the book!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Murder
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
5.0 stars
Highly recommend
I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
The writing about the topic of witch hunts, primarily in Scotland, was fascinating. I had no idea that almost 4,000 people, mainly women, were accused during a much longer time frame than in Salem, Massachusetts! It seems that we ALL know about Salem, but we don't know about the other places where witch hunts occurred, like England, Norway, and in current times (this is the scariest part of the book).
"The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women" is the subtitle of the book, which explains so much about witch hunts in a simple phrase. Wow!
This is a highly researched book, but it does not read like a scholarly tome. It is fast-paced, informative, and highly sarcastic.
I will not easily forget this powerful book by two powerful women!
For a more detailed review, check out my blog - booksbydorothea:
https://booksbydorothea.blogspot.com/2025/08/review-how-to-kill-witch-earcebook.html
Highly recommend
I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
The writing about the topic of witch hunts, primarily in Scotland, was fascinating. I had no idea that almost 4,000 people, mainly women, were accused during a much longer time frame than in Salem, Massachusetts! It seems that we ALL know about Salem, but we don't know about the other places where witch hunts occurred, like England, Norway, and in current times (this is the scariest part of the book).
"The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women" is the subtitle of the book, which explains so much about witch hunts in a simple phrase. Wow!
This is a highly researched book, but it does not read like a scholarly tome. It is fast-paced, informative, and highly sarcastic.
I will not easily forget this powerful book by two powerful women!
For a more detailed review, check out my blog - booksbydorothea:
https://booksbydorothea.blogspot.com/2025/08/review-how-to-kill-witch-earcebook.html
Content Warnings
Graphic: Bullying, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Physical abuse, Sexism, Sexual content, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, Medical trauma, Fire/Fire injury, Injury/Injury detail, Classism
informative
reflective
medium-paced
A good introductory work to the history of witch trials in the UK. While it does delve slightly in to witch trials elsewhere (Salem and global modern day concerns), it should be no means viewed as comprehensive. The guise of this book was that women being accused as witches is due to their second class nature in society (something I do agree with). Likely due to one of the authors background as a lawyer, the book’s real purpose seems go be making a case for her appeal to support those still being accused witchcraft today.
In many places the book shuns historical due process and his highly emotive. A true historian should be assessing all avenues of evidence and weighing them all with equal measure, rather an bulldozing through them with emotive language. The case in point being the contaminated grain in Salem, which is entirely dismissed in a single sentence, saying the people would have of course known to not make such mistakes. This is far from true- people who should know better have done far more foolish things historically (that is not to say I support the theory, but that their argument against it was poor). They fall into the trap of romanticising and philosophising on too many occasions with little fact to support what they are saying.
The glorification of the ‘gentleman archaeologist’ while entertaining for the reader is a far cry from the reality of actual working archaeologist, though perhaps it was true of the gentleman in question.
However, despite the flaws I have highlighted I did enjoy the book- but perhaps should have been researched and edited a bit more by someone with an academic historical background.
In many places the book shuns historical due process and his highly emotive. A true historian should be assessing all avenues of evidence and weighing them all with equal measure, rather an bulldozing through them with emotive language. The case in point being the contaminated grain in Salem, which is entirely dismissed in a single sentence, saying the people would have of course known to not make such mistakes. This is far from true- people who should know better have done far more foolish things historically (that is not to say I support the theory, but that their argument against it was poor). They fall into the trap of romanticising and philosophising on too many occasions with little fact to support what they are saying.
The glorification of the ‘gentleman archaeologist’ while entertaining for the reader is a far cry from the reality of actual working archaeologist, though perhaps it was true of the gentleman in question.
However, despite the flaws I have highlighted I did enjoy the book- but perhaps should have been researched and edited a bit more by someone with an academic historical background.
informative
medium-paced
Listened to it almost non stop from when I picked it up. Really interesting to hear about the history of the witch trials in Scotland and their lasting effects to today. It's made me want to know more!
dark
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
What a great distillation of their podcast. Loved the pacing and the good natured humor. And sadly, so many concepts about the witch trials that should be history are still relevant today. There is much to learn about humanity in here.
informative
informative
slow-paced
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced