| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Salem: Place, Myth, and Memory. Ed. by Dane Anthony Morrison and Nancy Lusignan Schultz. (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004. xx, 348 pp. $28.95, ISBN 1-55553-609-3.)
Visitors to Salem see its remarkably preserved architecture, its world-class museum first assembled by mariners, and Nathaniel Hawthorne's source of inspiration, the House of the Seven Gables. That picture, however, has been crafted by boosters who, beginning two centuries ago, regarded their past, present, and future with misgiving. For, as a result of the 1692 witchcraft trials, Salem's legacy was mostly one of intolerance and persecution. Through its dozen essays, which are highly uneven in quality, Salem: Place, Myth, and Memory not only pictures the evolution of those conflicting images, but celebrates the city's accomplishments. Unlike the anthology Salem: Cornerstones of a Historic City (Joseph Flibbert et al., 1999), which tells familiar stories for a popular audience, this collection bridges the academic and general markets.	1
Emerson W. Baker II begins with the 1626 settlers who expected a "mythical land of abundance" (p. 24), hence the name Salem, but who found instead occupied ground. Essex County became, he notes insightfully, "a frontier in the classic Western sense" (p. 28). This was tragically illustrated in 1677 when "an angry mob of women" revenged a provocation by mutilating two native prisoners, thus "transform[ing] themselves into the very 'savages' they feared and detested" (p. 34). That psychosis would reappear: "many who participated in the witchcraft trials, including the afflicted, were either refugees from native attack or had other ties to the war on the frontier" (p. 35).	. . .

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