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emibutton 's review for:
How to Kill a Witch: A Guide for the Patriarchy
by Claire Mitchell, Zoe Venditozzi
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.