Wreak havoc with local National Economies and since then a lot happen. He became part of the government and in charge of the finance portfolio and he is the man who may be called to a perceived creek exit from the eurozone. Thats a huge and historic moment. What the book argues is for americans europe matters. We do an awful lot of business with your zone companies. If the economy falters it will have grave consequences for us and varoufakis wants people to understand how intertwined these economies are and why we need greece right now. Host a couple books coming out this fall from nation books and from public affairs. This is cspan two, booktv. Booktvs on twitter. Follow is to get publishing new scheduling updates, author information and to talk directly with authors during live programs. Host you are watching booktv on cspan2. We are in new york city and one of the things we like to do when they come to new york is to talk with authors and get previews of their books that are coming out in the fall. Joining us now Pulitzer Prizewinning author stacy schiff. Her newest book coming out in the fall is called the witches sub five. Stacy schiff we all know about the salem witch trials. What do we know thats incorrect . Guest well thats pretty much what got me started. There was no food to. There was no one on the writer is there is in them movie version. Its not entirely about women. Many of the victims are men so its not a man on women event, to women on women event and theres a whole political cast to it that has been lost to history so its one of those moments wed all think we know about because we were at the crucible that we forget the crucible is a work of fiction. Also essentially speaking we think the which is burned but in fact they hung. In america we didnt burn which is and thats a piece of political propaganda which comes later from the south. Pretty much all the basic facts are wrong. Host the witches salem 1692, what was it like . Guest there were two salem. Salem town was where the trials occurred in Salem Village is where the first girls began to convulse and show what manifest what we think were symptoms of witchcraft so you have two salems a very isolated outpost of farmers and a somewhat more sophisticated congenial community right on the water was slightly more elaborate homes, slightly wealthier and a more urban focus then the farmers and its two salem town but the first will ride to press witchcraft charges. I should say a very dark and primitive and frightening place. When youre living in a massachusetts outpost in 1692 you are fairly certain that the indians are going to come barreling down on you at any moment and there are rumors in the arafat the french were about to arrive feeling on the frontier which Salem Village was more than salem town feeling vulnerable for women like this. Host was a population lacks. Guest Salem Village is about 500 people. Salem town is about 2000 which is considered a large city. Dostum is somewhere between six and a thousand people so salem and Boston Market to urban centers. Salem town is a very wealthy bustling port town in Salem Village is a farming community. They look to salem town to adjudicate their legal disputes. There is a certain tension between the town and the village. Host there is a religious aspect to this . Guest is hard to say. We are talking about society in which pretty much everyone is a god fearing. And whether he goes to meeting or does not put a meeting. Is there a pentup sense of sin and evil and guilt and shame that some outer wraps when these girls began to act out . Some of these girls in the initial days begin to entrap Church Sermons which was unthinkable for anyone to do but is particularly for young girl to do so is there some sense of sin and shame that a erupts as the guys are in their lives . Is certainly possible. Much of the Court Testimony indicates people work under some kind of spiritual distress at this moment. Pretty much religion coats and permeates every aspect of new england life at this point traded. Host who were some of the main characters that you you follow in the book . Guest you have the two young girls who are the initially afflicted girls. One is the ministers 9yearold daughter in Salem Village who disappears from the scene. The other is his 11yearold niece who works in the house who becomes one of the most serious witchhunters anyway. She identifies many which is. She tends to accuse people freely and tends to act out in the meetinghouse. Theyd name some of the obvious suspects. The first three suspects are the dubious characters do if you had to vote someone out of town those would be the three would pick but the group of accusers grows larger and they reach out toward the resident bad girl of the next community over, the 14yearold juvenile palanquin who is not nice to her parents. They reach out to a former minister of Salem Village and thats one of the more interesting characters because he is accused of witchcraft. He is brought back to trial from sale in town. So you get this reaching out largely propelled by their ideas of whom their parents have grudges against were the names that are in the air. Many people have been accused of witchcraft years earlier and are suddenly finding themselves on trial this time around with more dire result then what happened the first time around. I would say the minister gets accuses one of the most fascinating characters to me. At one point you have a mother daughter and grandmother who are in court together each of them accusing the daughter accusing the mother and the grandmothers of three generations of having introduced her to the devil and made her a witch. Host did this witch fever or this fear involve the entire area . Guest to a large extent yes. It spreads very quickly. Its important to remember how dark and frightening it was and how the smudges on the wall could mutate into Something Else especially when you have heard there are which is living down the road so severely easy idea that begins to steam roll. 25 communities in the end of massachusetts and connecticut will soon suffer an outbreak of its own. Most of the community most severely affected as andover and another historian has suggested that this would be better called the essex county witch trials rather than the salem witch trials because so many communities found themselves involved. Host doing research on this for their relevant records and Court Proceedings . Guest the records are fabulous. Unfortunately the trial records have disappeared conveniently perhaps great no one is really sure what happened. The deposition of many of the sworn testimony in the hearings much of what the attorney general is trying to figure out on the back of a piece of paper survive so we have many of the charges that are pressed and much of those early hearings with question and answer narrowly annotated. We had two death warrants in the document is chilling as you get a sensible was going on inside the courtrooms. Its a very noisy trial. Everyone is in the room. Everyone is allowed to speak at once. Theres an enormous amount of interrupting going on. The Court Reporter can necessarily hear whats happening and the accused essentially they are to somehow exonerate himself or herself. Via evidence is sworn against the accused and he is not allowed to swear for himself. The slightly uneven Playing Field so you have these really chilling documents. Once you walk into that courtroom the case is heavily weighed against you. Its a tribute pretty dramatic set of papers to read through. Host s stacy schiff what is the importance of the salem witch trials as we were per to them in our history . Guest its very convenient to have a serious disgrace in your pass because he keeps you in line. If something i think we hustled salem out when we start to be suspicious of our neighbors and react an invest too much in the expense of civil liberties. For the right reasons and the wrong reasons. I think whats interesting is how we misinterpreted and use it against each other. The reason we have turned which is into victims of earnings and hangings is in the 1860s the south very much took a position against the north by saying yes we may have slaves but you will have which is and you burned which is and that is where we get the idea that massachusetts burned which is so its something we can each other as well. The idea that we have misstep to me can now use that misstep to keep ourselves better in line its a National Disgrace which serves a purpose going forward. How many people were calm by the end of this . Guest 19. Host all women . Guest there are five male victims great for them hang in one is crushed under stones when he refuses to issue a plea as to whether he is guilty or not. Host how do you pick the topics of your book rex cleopatra, the great improvisation, franklin france and the birth of america, portrait of mrs. Vladimir nava cost. Guest dont these seem obvious to you . They have so much in common. Host they do a legislate to explain to the audience. Guest i was coming off of cleopatra and the idea of women in power and what is threatening about a powerful woman and what do women do with their power and why are men so somehow ruffled by female power and the very curious idea of an adolescent with power brick things that i felt i hadnt worked out with cleopatra and it upsets me after cleopatra. Also this was the ability to take a topic we all feel we are wellversed in and show that we know very little about and what we do know is largely at this point. Its difficult in the sense that we have some of this talk documentation but no documentation in the first person from the girls themselves. What we can infer whats going on in their minds and are tormented souls we get from the courtroom hearings. You wouldnt have been a first choice book for anyone who wanted serious documentation for psychological angle but you work with what you have. Host you won the Pulitzer Prize for leah patrick . Guest in fact the question there was can you pry apart the lives of two people that basically spent their entire lives in a closed room together . Its an interesting marriage because much of what he writes she added then much of what he says she writes for them in terms of were spotted so you have this melding of the two personalities and this was an attempt to see if i could sum up get them to pry apart . Host where we race and what is your background . Guest im from a small town in massachusetts which perhaps explains why at session. Im totally fascinated by insular smalltown massachusetts like as you can see. I went to williams actually so i was in massachusetts for many years and i went to publishing when i finish school. Host into the business of publishing . Do you consider yourself a historian . Guest a writer more than an historian in the sense that my emphasis is usually on the narrative. The research is immensely important that i want the reader to want to turn the page so im not interested so much in covering the field in terms of every detail. Im adjusted in making a coherent narrative that will give you the complexities and the nuances of the story while also making it feel as if you are reading something that you cant put down. Host would some of the topics you have covered in the new yorker . Guest the idea that you could have a crowdsourced and encyclopedia was mindboggling so this question at the beginning where you are pulling a dictionary of this show for checking with wikipedia . There was that sense of what is real knowledge and who are the real experts which in a funny way is come into play with the salem book as well. One of the interesting things about 17th century massachusetts is there are no newspapers are pressed. Everything that is being spoken around these people is coming to the morally and its a really interesting way the information gets very convoluted. You have a lot of rumor and very little fact and you can see where that ends up which to me is resonant with the internet today where you have a lot of chatter and you dont necessarily have someone weighing in and saying that indelible rumor is just rumor and does not affect. Host stacy schiff even though the book doesnt come out until october of 2015 what is your next project . Guest i think the book tour is my next project. Im not done with this subject