Salem Witch Judge

“LaPlante’s touching biography of Samuel Sewall upends popular stereotypes about Puritans . . . [and] reminds us how quickly the conventional wisdom can shift.” —The New York Times Book Review

In 1692, during the nefarious witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, Puritan Samuel Sewall sent twenty people to their deaths on trumped-up witchcraft charges. The trials might have doomed Sewall to infamy ex...