Books like Witch Hunts by Robert Rapley

An anthropologist chronicles a 1950s witch‑hunt in the Indian village of Bisipara, revealing how caste, kinship, and religious customs shape community responses to illness, blame, and justice.

A nonfiction chronicle of the decade‑long pursuit and eventual elimination of Osama bin Laden, detailing the evolution of U.S. counter‑terrorism tactics, intelligence integration, and the decisive SEAL raid in Abbottabad.

"On 20 September 1587 Walpurga Hausmannin of Dillingen in southern Germany was burned at the stake as a witch. Although she had confessed to committing a long list of maleficia (deeds of harmful magic), including killing forty-one infants and two mothers in labor, her evil career allegedly began with just one heinous act - sex with a demon. Fornication with demons was a major theme of her trial record, which detailed an almost continuous orgy of sexual excess with her diabolical paramour Federlin "in many diverse places,...even in the street by night."". "As Walter Stephens demonstrates in Demon Lovers, it was not Hausmannin or other so-called witches who were obsessive about sex with demons - instead, a number of devout Christians, including trained theologians, displayed an uncanny preoccupation with the topic during the centuries of the "witch craze." Why? To find out, Stephens conducts a detailed investigation of the first and most influential treatises on witchcraft (written between 1430 and 1530), including the infamous Malleus maleficarum (Hammer of Witches).". "Far from being credulous fools or mindless misogynists, early writers on witchcraft emerge in Stephens's account as rational but reluctant skeptics, trying desperately to resolve contradictions in Christian thought on God, spirits, and the sacraments that had bedeviled theologians for centuries. Proof of the physical existence of demons - for instance, through evidence of their intercourse with mortal witches - would provide strong evidence for the reality of the supernatural, the truth of the Bible, and the existence of God. Early modern witchcraft theory reflected a crisis of belief - a crisis that continues to be expressed today in popular debates over angels, satanic ritual child abuse, and alien abduction."--BOOK JACKET.

The essays in this handbook, written by leading scholars working in the rapidly developing field of witchcraft studies, explore the historical literature regarding witch beliefs and witch trials in Europe and colonial America between the early fifteenth and early eighteenth centuries. During these years witches were thought to be evil people who used magical power to inflict physical harm or misfortune on their neighbours. Witches were also believed to have made pacts with the devil and sometimes to have worshipped him at nocturnal assemblies known as sabbaths. These beliefs provided the basis for defining witchcraft as a secular and ecclesiastical crime and prosecuting tens of thousands of women and men for this offence. The trials resulted in as many as fifty thousand executions. These essays study the rise and fall of witchcraft prosecutions in the various kingdoms and territories of Europe and in English, Spanish, and Portuguese colonies in the Americas.