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In this revised doctoral dissertation, Richard Godbeer of the University of California, Riverside, expertly explores the relationship between religion and the persistence (rise?) of magic in seventeenth-century New England. In the process, he makes significant contributions to the recent literature on Puritan culture and Salem witchcraft. Godbeer argues that neither English nor American Puritanism was hostile to magical beliefs and practices (as Keith Thomas argued in Religion and the Decline of Magic, 1971). Rather, early New England provided congenial and even fertile ground for the occult, in part because magic helped to alleviate anxieties arising from difficulties associated with attaining assurance of salvation. In a deft inversion of Max Weber's thesis, Godbeer argues that Puritan angst over salvation led, not...