THE TERM WITCH-HUNT IS USED TODAY TO DESCRIBE EVERYTHING FROM POLITICAL SCANDALS TO SCHOOL BOARD SHAKEUPS, BUT ITS ORIGINS ARE FAR FROM CASUAL.
Long before Arthur Miller likened McCarthyism to the Salem witch trials, and long before those trials themselves, women and men were targeted by suspicious neighbors, accused of committing horrific crimes by supernatural means, scrutinized by magistrates, ministers, and jurymen, and summarily executed. THE ENEMY WITHIN chronicles the most prominenet witch-hunts of the Western World and shows how for two millennia the fear of witchcraft has fueled recurrent cycles of accusation, persecution, and purging. With the vision of a historian and the voice of a novelist, prize-winning author John Demos explores the far-reaching social, cultural, and psyhchological roots of teh scourge that is witch-hunting, and reveals the dark side of communities driven to rid themselves of perceived evil, no matter what the human cost.
