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The line in the title of this review was said by Martha Carrier, who was hanged as a witch in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. Many years ago, when I was a child, I read and was utterly fascinated by a book called, "The Witch of Blackbird Pond", by Elizabeth George Speare. It's still in print today, so perhaps more recent generations of impressionable readers have also been "bewitched" by the book. "Blackbird Pond" started me on a lifelong interest in the Salem witch hunt. (The book was set, I vaguely remember, in Connecticut but the story seemed to be about the real Salem witch trials.) Now American author Stacy Schiff has published a wonderfully written book of non-fiction about the whole crazy time in Salem town and Salem village when the townspeople saw witches, witches everywhere. Stacy Schiff takes a very measured approach to the nine or so months in 1692 when young girls and some older women accused other women - and a few men - of witchcraft. The "accusers" ran wild when brought face to face with those they were accusing. The girls threw fits and saw strange apparitions in the presence of the "witches". The authorities - both civil and clerical - tended to believe the claims of the girls, until they became too outlandish. And they were already outlandish; flying sticks, sicknesses, and possessed animals were claimed by the accusers. What caused what amounted to mass hysteria for those months? Daughers accused mothers; husbands "remembered strange goings-on" by their wives. "Touch tests" were performed on those accused. Eventually, 22 people - both male and female - were executed as witches. Most by hanging, though death-by-pressing was also carried out. (What a charming way to die...) But what Stacy Schiff does best in her book is to give an overall view of both time and place and the societal pressures that resulted in the accusations of witchcraft. Stacy Schiff's book on the trial and the aftermath is compulsively readable. In fact, I stayed up much of last night reading the book. (If this review is somewhat incomprehensible, my tiredness is the cause!) I can heartily recommend "The Witches: Salem, 1692". And now I think I'll go download and read that old childhood fav - "The Witch of Blacbird Pond".