James rosen looks at former Vice President dick cheneys time serving in the bush ministration. And this weekend, Michael Marmon will report on the factors contribute to Americas Health and wellness. Im talking about the way we organize our affairs in society, which impact on health and the unfair distribution of health, health and quality is judged by reasonable means to be avoidable. After words airs on book tv every saturday at 10 00 p. M. And sunday at 9 00 p. M. Eastern. You can watch all previous after words programs on a website, book tv. Org. Stacy schiff is next on book tv. Her book, the witches looks at the salem witch trials. Stacy schiff received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the humanities. And untoward in literature from the american had a mate of arts and letters. Her latest book, the witches salem, 1692 when a ministers daughter began to scream and convulse and ended less than a year later, but not before 19 million women had been hanged in an elderly man crushed to death. The panic spread quickly involving the most educated men and prominent politicians of the colony. And curious ways, the trials which shape the future republic. As psychologically thrilling as it is historical seminal, the witches is stacy schiff account of this story. Please join me in welcoming stacy schiff. [applause]. Thank you. Dont worry about the signing, i am a slow writer, but i will get to signing for everyone. Working on this book i went to see one of the great 17th century experts, some i thought who had written the best pages we have on salem because i wanted advice about the archives and when i left that afternoon he as an afterthought offered another little piece of advice. I should probably warn you, he said, strange things tend to happen to you when you work on witchcraft. It was a crisp day. I walked often researched and wrote the book and delivered it more or less on schedule. The publisher was pleased with it and they were more pleased when they discovered that the book industry publication was going to be doing a feature on me this fall and with that they would include a full page full bleed photo and indeed they did and it looked like this. [laughter] as you might notice, stacy schiff is not i. Thanks to twitter it took about 90 seconds to learn that that stacy schiff is the novelist amy stewart and she is a book out this fall which i will also sign after this talk. [laughter] when i asked my publisher to send this over so i could show it to you i also asked for it image of the magazines adlib context, which i had not yet seen and they said did and here it is and it announces my turn to fiction and my forthcoming novel. You can imagine my surprise that learning that the four years i spent the archives under deciphering and squinting and corralling my imagination and triple checking details was also that imy imagination and triple checking details was also that i could write a novel. Indeed, strange things happen to you when you work on witchcraft. The witches is not a work of fiction, but instead a attempt to grapple with what happened in eastern massachusetts in 1692 and among the more disturbing moments in our history and they qualify as the best known least understood chapter in americas past. Partly because it seemed so unprofitable, partly become a comes to as large a Throop Hawthorne and Arthur Miller who were writing fiction and partly because new englands enemies seem to have made out that the story. Here we are about halfway between Plymouth Rock and paul revere and it all seems to go entirely off the rails. Salem offers several kind of stories and once i will make clear in a few minutes, but all of that in early nine short months. Its a tragedy to which we regularly return. Few quarters of American History have been so ask have been so often explored and if you dont believe me take a look at this local Library Shelves of the 17th Century America and by the way these are my office shelves when i finished the book and youll notice those little volumes at the top, green and red volumes, those are the Classical Library refugee from the cleopatra years and only recently did i look up and wonder what cicero must think to be surrounded on all sides by puritans. [laughter] salem is a bit our National Campfire tale, one of the rare moments in our history when the candles are knocked out and everyone seems to grope around the dark. If the place where all good stories begin. In the dark we believe most fervently and imagine most vividly. In the dark we contemplate our mistakes and wrestle with our fears. In the dark, goes the time problem, every cat is a leopard and if you read the court papers of 17th century, six county, you begin to notice that new england lived anxiously and attentively in the dark. Women stumbled into bed to find stranger sleeping there. Then trip home through the night and discover familiar landmarks have moved in their lust in their own backyard. Young men report they are weak kneed at the thought of writing through town to their familys farm after sundown and when the devil offers to company them they accept his offer. In a dark burn the candle knocks over and a teenage girl informed the man who attempts to it assaulter and i quote i would rather be cored by the cows than to file by such a rubbish you. I read every 17th century account of the new england merck of the howling wolves and the lurking native americans, but it took me a very long time to realize how dark dark chili can be. Our world is utterly electrified in their world is physically black. In fact, it took me until this is Downtown Manhattan 2012, in the wake of Hurrican Sandy i was driving friends home when the power was out and i turned off the headlights and suddenly all of those accounts of the new England Wilderness so we made sense to me. Seventeenth century dark was a very different dark hence the line in chapter one, the sky over new england was crow black, pitch black, viable black, so black it could be difficult at night to keep to the path, so black a line of trees might freely migrate to another location. Or that you might find yourself pursued after nightfall by a rabid black called leaving you to crawl home bloody and disoriented on all fours. I should mention also, Court Testimony the early american often mentioned he had been an ear witness to something. Word and sound careened supreme. It was really really quiet. The testimony, by the way about the rabid black called is from a september wit which trial, the hog was no hog at all it was the devil and had caused him to trip flashing his leg with his knife and he knew who it was. It was a witch, he swore, and he could identify her, the woman who had come into the tavern where he was drinking with a friend a few nights earlier and told the friend he should not have been out so late in the woman hanged for witchcraft two weeks after that testimony. The basic salem facts are simple. In early 1692, over eight harsh winter a nine and 11year old girl began to shudder and scream they happen to have been the niece and daughter of Salem Village minister, samuel and this is him before the move to salem when he wouldve been in his late 30s. The cousins complained something vivid choked them in their bodies twisted in the attempted to fly through the air, they lunged into fireplaces, one of them disappeared halfway down a well. We have a number of descriptions of their symptoms, but obviously we have no image. This is the closest we can come. This is from a 19th century french text on the faces of hysteria where an Emotional Trauma and its physical manifestation, so arched back, the rigid limbs are very much what people who observed the paris girls described and remember that no one in the 17th century distinguished between overtaxed nervous system within a matter of weeks to other village girls began to compose, all of them soon learned from Samuel Parris from other authorities that they were bewitched and with that diagnosis you could very well yes what happened, their symptoms began to deteriorate. Soon enough all four of them revealed to bewitched him. We dont know why they named the names they did, but think about it for second. To the question, who annoys you, who unsettles you, who irritates you, we all have an answer. So did the girls. About a month or so ago my credit card was hacked and when i called American Express to report it, my first question was did you ledger card to anyone in the second question was do you know anyone who might have done this to you. All i could think was i know that question. It turned out there was not one, but three witches flying around Salem Village. Words when out at the end of february for their arrest. The suspects appeared before the authorities who interrogated them in the manner of the date, which is to say a local beggar woman, the first woman deposed was asked when she signed a contract with the devil, why she heard the girls and what creatures she had dispatched to do so. Those questions came to her from important welldressed man who lived in stately homes and owned significant businesses who spoke with weight and 40. To know the words, the context was asymmetric and i should say that the story has something for everyone and here it begins to mutate. If it started as a fairytale, once upon a time, a wicked witch cast a spell on two little girls, it turns soon enough into a courtroom drama. Lets me talk for a few minutes about witchcraft. And how it worked. Not every 17th century new englander was clear on the subject, but those who were were exceedingly clear. To the early american, in which existed as plainly as heat or light, as one authority had it, it was as obvious the spirit could convey many women through the air as it was the wind could flatten a house. The early american which, i should add, did not look like this. Although, there is a great deal of the wizard of oz in this story about which and more in a minute. Nor did the 17th century which look like this. This is the original wicked witch of the west from the 1900 addition the wizard of oz and i am partial to that in the entirely unexpected stat. This is an early american halloween witch, which came late to the holiday and we really dont even know how they were involved with halloween in the first place, but when they first appeared they dress colorfully and seem to have reverted to basic black only after Margaret Hamilton in the 1939 movie. The which is a 17th century new englander to her with something who performed a natural by virtue of her contract with the devil. From that packed, she drew the power to transform herself into cats, walls, rabbits and of course into rabid blackhawks. In which could be a man or woman , the more often she was female. She maintained a menagerie of ends or familiars, demonic mascots that did her bidding and were often turtles, weasels, cats, dogs and told were prevalent and as you can see this 17th century woman is reportedly feeding her blood to her diabolical toad. This is a woman with her great black hat and her demon familiar and she illustrates a 1621 english witchcraft case and this woman was acquitted of all charges. These are more diabolical familiars and youll see the range from your basic standard issue barnyard animal to fantastical gargoyle type creatures. Black cats were a particular favorite and turned up regularly throughout the salem testimony. Black dogs recur in the salem record also, but historically english witches tended to prefer feline two to canine form. This is not a witch is familiar. This is our family. [laughter] looking, i hope, ever so vaguely demonic here. A witch could be a maturin contentious malcontent or she or he could be an explicitly strong or unaccountably smart. Both kinds of witches would turn up in salem as would well fee merchants who were witches, sea captains work witches, ministers and homeless by bill girls who were wishes. Witchcraft tended to running families along when nero lines and there would be a reason why some and have the were the related related to earlier witchcraft stuff specs or above. While her power was supernatural, the witchs crime was religious. In new england, her ultimate target was the sole rather than the body. Her connection to those convulsing girls in salem, every englishman had long known what enchantment look like. According to the legal guide, on many salem desks which was about to land on Samuel Parris desk, witchcraft manifested a senseless transit paralyzed limbs, compulsions, jaws clenched shut, shaking and in other words the symptoms of the girls to a t. Among the abundant proofs of a witches existent was the biblical injunction against her. Now shalt not suffer a witch to live command scripture and im sorry to have to share with you the basic english translation of axes to a two eighteen. Any woman using a natural powers were secret arts is to be put to death. That pretty much applies to everyone i know. [laughter] when massachusetts established a legal code, First Capital crime was the dollar tree. The second was the witchcraft. In the years since those laws have been codified new england indited at 100 witches, one quarter man, but massachusetts had hanged only six. Beside the mystery of the Salem Village symptoms, there is the arguably greater mystery, wyeth 6092, the hasty and merciless prosecution. The charges were familiar from earlier cases, casting spells on livestock was a common one. Salem witches cast spells on cattle, hey, wagons and muskets and enchanted fireplaces and sent dishes sailing. This was cut from an Early English case appeared to these women did not fare well. They were writing a pig because they had been accused of pig bewitching. New england witches do a great deal of flying down shimmies and through apple trees and ultimately the diabolical diabolical sabbath carried the english which did not fly. Continental witches, however, did which would provide clearly what happens in salem and 6092. Nor had there been ghost which began to slither around the courtroom in salem. Most but not all are women who come back from the dead who avenge themselves. Those who confessed to witchcraft were mentioned having flown, i should add, on the devils shoulders or on polls or branches or sticks and no new england which will ever fly on a broom. These are english flyers no, those are not english flyers. There are english flyers and seemed to be recruiting the women on the ground this one comes later, probably 18th century and as far as broomsticks go, this one is my favorite. Leave it to a french woman to fly gracefully. These are 15th century french broomsticks. That accepted logic on the phenomenon went like this. Witches existed in all caps of places. House at possible that imagination, which was so personal and unpredictable could deliver the same conceit across cultures, and all eras . In other words, witchcraft was so preposterous, so improbable that had to be true, could it make this stuff up. To the impossibility of a shared delusion was at in most compelling reason to believe in witchcraft, not to subscribe to it with heresy. Minds did not make sport of the invisible world especially in light of the evidence, noted cotton matter that young influential often minister at the center of the crisis. Without mistry there is the faith. To deny ritually witchcraft was to deny region religion. To deny witchcraft was to advocate it. The first arrest surprise no one. The three suspects counted among the unlikely people to be voted off the island. Let me talk for a few seconds about the next one. About the fourth accused which. I think part of what fascinates us about 1692 is the randomness of the accusations, what if the next knock were to land on your door . In the case of martha correia, very pious stiff spine farm woman in her 60s, we know precisely what happened. When the knock came about midafternoon on march 12. Her name first uttered by a 12year old village girl surprise everyone. Because it did, a course deacon and another villager made a call on her as a kind of courtesy and first they stopped off to see that accusing girl. Could she be mistaken . Could she described the clothes her tormentor were . A girl could not because she explained the witch had also that morning blinded her temporarily. The main road often found martha at home. She welcomed them with a smile and also anticipated their question. I know what you have come for. You have come to talk to me about being a witch, she said. She was not a witch and could not stop her neighbors from gossiping. Had i know this . The two men later wrote out a detailed deposition and i show this to you so you will feel sorry for me. This is vintage 17th century handwriting. When the cars revealed a bewitched girl had named her martha was prepared, but does she tell you what close i had on , she asked. Did the men were flabbergasted by the question and she seemed to have some kind of supernatural knowledge, so they asked her to repeat it and she assured them she had no cause for concern because everyone knew how devout she was. She was a bit given to lecturing and was not surprised the devil had recruited the first three women accused. In her estimation, they were idle slothful people. Remarkable thing i should say about him is that even those who believed themselves to be innocent think the other accused witches to be guilty. That afternoon martha corey promised to open the eyes of the magistrates and ministers so they might locate the real witches, another comment that would backfire. Within the week, not only her 12year old accuser and the girls mother was also afflicted. She nearly 12 the older corey to shreds offering her a diabolical pact to sign. The warrant for coreys arrest without immediately. She stood accused of having committed acts of witchcraft on a grown women and on for youngsters, one of them Samuel Parris 12year old niece. The note in black at the bottom is a salem constable that they arrested corey and she is in custody, but this document is dated march 19, which was a saturday and because of the sabbath the next day she could not immediately be apprehended. That left her time to attend meeting alongside her accusers. Before the pulpit that sunday, you have f