Witches and Witchcraft

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, entire communities, particularly in central Europe were gripped by a fear of witches and witchcraft, and pursued witches in order to bring them to justice. Professor David Nash unlocks the sometimes opaque history of the phenomenon of witchcraft in Britain, Europe and America. The book explores the development of witchcraft and belief in witches, the obsession with witches and witchcraft that spawned witch-hunting, the hey-day and decline of witch-hunting, and the fascinating afterlife of witchcraft covering not only the survival of some beliefs into the nineteenth century but the academic interest in witchcraft in the early twentieth century, which culminated in the interest shown in the phenomenon by experts serving the interests and ideology of Nazi Germany.