1688 portrait of Increase Mather by John van der Spriett.
Increase Mather: brief intro from Wikipedia (President of Harvard: 1681- 1701)
Increase Mather: a YouTube video (10 min)
Increase Mather: brief YouTube overview
Also see our other "Puritan Bibliographies":
Cotton Mather: brief intro from Wikipedia
"Who is Cotton Mather?" a fascinating 5 min YouTube video
"Cotton Mather and the Struggles of Early American Puritan Piety": YouTube video (1 hour+)
Salem witch trials of 1692–1693: Wikipedia
Fanciful representation of the Salem witch trials, lithograph from 1892
A Delusion of Satan : the full story of the Salem witch trials by
This compelling study of the horrific Salem Witch Trials--the first of its kind in over forty-five years--draws strength from new psychological insights into the roots of the hysteria that spurred the witch hunts of the late 1600s, and links them to the contemporary "witch hunts" of the twentieth century. For more than three hundred years, the hysteria that gripped Massachusetts during the Salem witch trials of the late 1600s has fascinated readers worldwide. Now acclaimed British writer Frances Hill has applied contemporary psychology to the Salem phenomenon and come up with startling results. Why were nearly all of the "afflicted" people women? What kind of mentality did the Puritans possess to place a four-year-old child in prison? What were the politics behind the witch hunts and trials, and what similarities exist in the witch hunts of the twentieth century (for example, the "witch hunts" of the McCarthy era)? In A Delusion Of Satan, Frances Hill answers these questions and many more in a conversational and frighteningly realistic narrative as she maps out details of the witch trials and subsequent hangings-information never revealed before. Discipline, morality, and intellectual rigor-these are all attributes that Puritanism bequeathed to the New World. Unfortunately, along with them came a tendency to regard an enemy as beneath empathy and deserving destruction.A Delusion Of Satanreminds the reader that these impulses, lurking in all people, can only be countered by constant reminders of common humanity.
