Book review: The First Witches: Women of Power in the Classical World

With a background in ancient history and literature, author Alexis Hannah Prescott explores how Greek and Roman gods and folklore transcend time and place. 

The western world so admired the classical arts, culture, and history that centuries later schoolboys applying to the newly founded Harvard College in the 1630s had to be well versed in Latin grammar. And once enrolled, they studied Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. 

Curiously, students were reading classical texts imbued with the power of witches and witchcraft, which is incompatible to the Bible’s warnings. The Bible mentions forbidden practices such as divination, consulting with mediums or familiar spirits, interpreting omens, casting spells, and necromancy, though without much detail. The problem with witchcraft is in trying to manipulate spiritual forces instead of asking God for help. And the punishment for contacting demonic spirits is not being able to inherit the kingdom of God. 

In case you’re not a classical scholar, Prescott provides synopses of major works—like Homer’s Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Lucan’s Erichtho—to explain the archetypes of Greco-Roman witches. As they transform from the strong, attractive but vindictive Greek witch to the bitter, haggard Roman one, Prescott mentions how dramatic social and political changes affected witches (and women’s) roles in society and in literature. 

The author also makes the point that witch hunts in Britain and the 13 Colonies were not based on the King James Bible (1611). Being able to read and have access to the Bible was mostly limited to the upper classes and to clerics. King James himself was extraordinarily concerned about witchcraft—believing witches caused the tumultuous seas that delayed his bride Anne of Denmark’s arrival in England—so much so that he wrote Daemonologie (1597). 

At the Salem witch trials in 1692, judges and some of the jury attended Harvard. They studied Greco-Roman literature featuring attractive, alluring Greek witches with deadly streaks of hostility, and Roman hag witches who torture, maim, and sabotage men. Classical witchcraft, mixed with regional folktales and backed by the Bible, was real in the dark woods and villages of Massachusetts Bay. A cursing beggar woman, a healthy cow that suddenly drops dead, sleep paralysis while dreaming of your neighbor, or shapeshifters in the shadows—what else could it be except witchcraft?

Prescott covers the witch’s metamorphosis from classical antiquity to the modern day, using literary characters we may be more familiar with, like Snow White’s wicked stepmother, Dr. Frankenstein, and Shakespeare’s weird sisters in Macbeth. Since the 1960s, she notes, Wicca and other trends have changed the classical witch dynamic. 

Or maybe it’s the women taking back their power.

Thanks to Pen & Sword History for the ARC.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The First Witches: Women of Power in the Classical World

By Alexis Hannah Prescott

Pen & Sword History, 2025

Book review: William Phipps and the Diving Bell Bubble

Before reading William Phipps and the Diving Bell Bubble by Leon Hopkins, I considered Phipps a shadowy figure in the Salem witch trials. He wasn’t actively involved and yet his arrival with the new Charter led to the formation of the Court of Oyer and Terminer, followed by guilty verdicts and the deaths of 20 innocent people. 

In October 1692, Phipps closed the court, tossed out spectral evidence, and in January 1693 opened the new Superior Court of Judicature. Within days, Phipps decisively shut down the witch trials after Judge William Stoughton issued execution warrants for several women whose earlier trials resulted in guilty verdicts that relied on spectral evidence.

Hopkins’ book showed Phipps (1651-1695) had the strength of character to get into situations which, in many cases, were beyond his experience and training. For an unschooled Maine backwoodsman, he fraternized with powerful men, even royalty. 

For a person with no military experience, he was hired to lead military campaigns in Acadia and Quebec. And for a non-government man, he ended up as a royal governor. Some would say these leaps in prospects happened because Phipps discovered the rich treasures of a Spanish galleon, and being required to share a percentage of that loot with the English monarch, earned a knighthood from King James II. 

But that’s not giving credit where credit is due. Phipps rescued his neighbors during an Indian raid in 1676, sailing them into Boston harbor on a ship he built. He attracted wealthy supporters through joint-stock companies to finance his treasure hunting. He married an enterprising widow who could hold her own while he was at sea or in England for months or years at a time. And he won the admiration of Rev. Cotton Mather, who wrote his biography.

At times, the book gets bogged down in tangential topics like the English Civil Wars and Cromwell or John Eliot (1604-1690), the Puritan missionary to the American Indians, and the Pequot Wars (1636-1638). Still, those topics connect to later events and people in Phipps’ life. Hopkins also drops curious historical tidbits—like the imposter royal heir, a secret deal between two monarchs on a Catholic conversion—that especially American readers may not know.

Thanks to Pen & Sword History for the ARC.

Rating: ★★★★

William Phipps and the Diving Bell Bubble 
by Leon Hopkins
Pen & Sword History, 2025

Book review: Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus

In Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus, Elaine Pagels delves into the Gospels, the first four books of the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). Based on critical literary and historical analysis, these books were written anonymously 40 to 70 years after Jesus’ death. But, Pagels says, their intent was not to document history or write a biography but to “spread good news about faith in Jesus.”

With Sunday school, an illustrated Bible, hymns and Christmas songs, children learn about Jesus’ life from start to finish. But the Bible isn’t so linear. It was “a huge effort to pull all four Gospels together, as if they tell a single story,” Pagels explains. These books have some similarities and curious differences. For example, Matthew and Luke mention the birth of Jesus, but Mark and John do not. Matthew says the Magi follow the new star that proclaims the birth of the new king. Luke has no star and no Magi, but local herdsmen visit baby Jesus asleep in the manger.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke share similar content, order of events, and wording, which suggests they may have used common sources. However, the authors and the audiences were different. Mark, who wrote the earliest surviving account, was a devout Jew who believed in one God. Luke was a Gentile and became a (Jewish) convert. John, who Pagels calls the “radical revisionist writer,” is the one who explicitly says Jesus is the Son of God, whose sacrificial death atoned for the sins of the world. All of them use words of the Jewish prophets and the Psalms to prove Jesus’ life was foretold in Scriptures.

In 325 CE, Emperor Constantine gathered 300 bishops to formulate the Nicene Creed, the core Christian beliefs about the nature of God and the divinity of Christ—the basis of the Gospel of John. Over the decades that followed, church leaders and councils decided which doctrines and stories fit this overarching message. Of the many stories of Jesus that existed, few were chosen as scripture; the rest were destroyed.*

The Gospels remind us how Jesus lived, with love, compassion, and support for everyone. And, as Pagels declares, “In a world filled with challenge, oppression, and suffering, their stories shift—often suddenly—into hope.”

Miracles and Wonder is both the keystone and cornerstone to Pagels’ other books on early Christianity and the Gnostics. As a historian and religious scholar, she thoughtfully considers the historical mystery of Jesus and his message while adding personal stories and reflections on her life’s work.

Thanks to Doubleday for the ARC.

Rating: ★★★★★

Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus 
by Elaine Pagels
Doubleday, 2025

*Despite the decree, monks from Nag Hammadi hid some of the forbidden texts in caves. In 1945, these early Christian and Gnostic texts were discovered in a sealed jar. 

Book review: Cleavage: Men, Women, and the Space Between Us

In her first memoir, She’s Not There (2003), Jennifer Finney Boylan takes us from childhood through the process of transitioning into a woman. And in the end, the reader is left with the same question that faces Jenny: What about her marriage?

In Cleavage, the author is in her 60s and looking back at her life, as a boy, man, husband, father, trans woman. The memories are so vivid and perfectly preserved in two genders. The disassociation of being a girl in a boy’s body somehow does not destroy or diminish those experiences, like attending an all-boys private high school, dating, marrying Deedee and having two children, living by the lake in Maine, and making bread. Boylan is surrounded by a supportive community and loving family and friends.

As a professor and public figure, there’s little sense of conflict, antagonism, or anti-trans sentiment. It made me wonder, was Boylan holding back negative moments? Or was this book’s intention a celebration of their life? But then, there’s this line that echoes through me, especially now: “I am practicing how not to get beaten within an inch of my life.”

Boylan writes about the societal pressures of being a woman, of being lesser than: the voice of uncertainty, the immature vocabulary, the salad instead of steak. It’s oddly disconcerting when she starts obsessing over weight. Boylan also covers trans conventions, voice lessons, passing as female, that in between space, and the privilege of being trans—the expensive surgeries and procedures available only to people above a certain tax bracket.

In the end, I felt like I was invited into Jenny’s world, though I also wanted to sit at the counter to watch the breadmaking and then bite into a slice.

Thanks to Celadon Books for the ARC.

rating: ★★★★

Cleavage: Men, Women, and the Space Between Us
by Jennifer Finney Boylan
Celadon Books, 2025

Book review: Heretic: Jesus Christ and the Other Sons of God

With the subtitle, “Jesus Christ and the Other Sons of God,” Catherine Nixey’s book Heretic is expected to raise eyebrows.

Greek and Roman writers, she says, created parodies of the many so-called prophets. To them, Jesus was just another claimant putting on the mantle of son of God. While in the marketplace, magicians, witches, and astrologers promised health cures, in the temples, people asked divine beings for help by offering miniature models of their afflicted anatomy. Some practitioners used tricks to make the blind see, the lame walk, and the dead rise because it helped businesses boom. So how could they tell if Jesus was the real deal?

Besides his message, what set Jesus apart was tradition. Yet Apollonius of Tyana (b. 15 CE, d. 100 CE) had a similar backstory: An angel visited his pregnant mother; the heavens marked his birth with a lightning bolt; he preached and gained followers; he raised the dead; the Romans put him on trial; he vanished, presumably died, and then reappeared to his followers. Nixey argues Jesus and Apollonius’ trials and deaths are foreshadowed by the philosopher Socrates (c. 470 BCE to 399 BCE).

There’s no doubt that the historical Jesus existed. Yet anomalies exist about his life in the New Testament, like two gospels claiming his virgin birth while other canonical books give Joseph the credit and provide his and Mary’s ancestry. As the cult of Jesus spread, some followers incorporated their own ideas and stories, plus bits of other faiths and spiritual leaders into their religion. 

(For more on the branches of Christianity, check out Lance Grande’s charts and text in The Evolution of Religions: A History of Related Traditions.)

At this juncture, I expected Nixey to slap back with how the New Testament created uniformity for Christian beliefs. She does explore the Apocrypha and the Nag Hammadi scrolls and how their stories add to the Bible. But I had hoped she’d mention how the official canon was chosen, why she thinks some books were not included, and tempt us with the possibility of secrets hidden in the Vatican Apostolic Archives or in undiscovered caves.

Instead, we read how Christianity grew exponentially when Emperor Constantine (c. 272 to 337 CE) converted to Christianity and how Roman roads carried the Christian message to the far reaches of the empire and beyond. And then, since she’s a classicist scholar, Nixey bemoans the great loss of Greek and Roman art, manuscripts, and buildings—destroyed by the Holy Roman Empire. Between that, the horror of the Crusades, the laws of persecution, and the unholy desire to control the world, I’d say the Church also stomped on Jesus’ main message: Love. 

The closing chapters show how Christianity tried to erase the classical world—its pantheon of gods, philosophy, science, medicine, law, literature, arts, and architecture—in deference to the Church’s desire for control and real estate. 

Heretic is a work of history not theology, as Nixey states in the author’s note. It’s written for popular audiences.

rating: ⭐⭐⭐

Heretic: Jesus Christ and the Other Sons of God
by Catherine Nixey
Mariner Books

Book review: The Resurrectionist

The Resurrectionist captures Edinburgh’s cobbled streets lined with gray buildings, the boisterous university students, the early morning fog, the bustle of tradespeople and travelers, the smell of beer. 

It’s 1828, and in defiance of his family’s wishes, James Willoughby embarks on a thrilling but ultimately dangerous adventure: to attend Edinburgh’s famed university to study medical science, whatever the cost. Soon, he is thrust into the darkly competitive world of body snatchers, to provide specimens to pay for the private anatomy school essential to his studies.

A. Rae Dunlap creates characters you care about, even though they’re involved in illicit and unethical acts—from James to the artistic dissectionist, the professional mourner, and the faithful lookout. As readers, we are rooting for them. That’s why The Resurrectionist is one of those gothic novels that’s hard to put down. It’s gory but good.

rating: ★★★★★

The Resurrectionist  
by A. Rae Dunlap
Kensington Publishing

Book review: The Dead of Winter: Beware the Krampus and Other Wicked Christmas Creatures

As an American reader, Krampus and scary yuletide creatures are mostly foreign to me. In The Dead of Winter, Sarah Clegg takes us on her winter travels through different European countries to explore the dark and threatening side of the season. 

In these pages, we go from the English Lord of Misrule, the horsehead-skulled Mari Lwyds in Wales, the judgy Italian witch Befana, and the punishing Germanic horned beast Krampus to the upside-down social order of the Carnival in Venice. As a folklorist, Clegg is good at exploring how these traditions started out and evolved over the centuries.

With The Dead of Winter, I was struck by how different the American upbringing compared to European families over the centuries—even though many of us have ancestral ties to Europe. But if you look hard enough, North American children know the threats of bad behavior and coal in their stockings. It’s just subtler, without the parades of nightmarish creatures passing through. 

After reading Clegg’s book, you’ll understand hidden meanings behind some Christmas TV classics and carols. Perhaps you'll even incorporate some of these traditions, like a Krampus run, into your holiday festivities. 

rating: ★★★★

The Dead of Winter: Beware the Krampus and Other Wicked Christmas Creatures
by Sarah Clegg
Algonquin Books

Real Krampus, 2024

Here's the Real Krampus who visited Old Town Hall in Salem, Massachusetts, a few days before Krampusnacht (December 5). Impressive and scary, he punishes bad children or scares them into being good so that they'll find treats from good Saint Nicholas the next morning (St. Nicholas Day, December 6).