Editor’s Foreword (Jon Woronoff)
Acknowledgments
Chronology
Introduction
THE DICTIONARY
Bibliography
About the Authors
Jonathan Durrant is senior lecturer at the University of Glamorgan
where he teaches courses on early-modern history.
Michael D. Bailey teaches medieval history at Iowa State
University.
For those libraries needing a comprehensive overview of this topic
it would be a good addition to public and academic libraries.
*American Reference Books Annual*
The second edition of the Historical Dictionary of Witchcraft
covers the history of witchcraft from 1750 BCE to the present.
Entries in this historical dictionary range from a short paragraph
to a page. There are liberal cross-references within the articles,
although they don’t have citations. The bibliography is extensive
and includes citations from twenty-first-century print sources. The
main focus is Europe and North America, but there are articles
covering the rest of the world. There are more entries as well as
updated citations in this edition, so libraries with the first
edition may want this as a replacement. Recommended for public and
academic libraries.
*Booklist*
Part of Scarecrow's "Historical Dictionaries of Religions,
Philosophies, and Movements" series, this second edition (1st ed.,
by Bailey, CH, Jul'04, 41-6237) has the usual arrangement of
chronology, entries, and bibliography divided into subjects.
Written by Durrant (Univ. of Glamorgan, Wales) and Bailey (Iowa
State Univ.), the content is a conglomeration of material on
ancient roots, historical European witchcraft, and demonology;
similar beliefs in other cultures today (such as in the Caribbean
and various African nations); and the modern religion of
Witchcraft. Entries are short, with no bibliography, and include
cross-references in the usual dictionary style. In the
introduction, series editor Jon Woronoff seems to take a somewhat
jocular attitude to the subject, assuring readers that the content
is relevant and "far from hocus-pocus." With most of the entries
focused on the history of western European witchcraft, this work
will be of interest primarily to historians rather than
practitioners or scholars of contemporary religious Witchcraft.
Summing Up: Recommended.
*CHOICE*
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