This book by Milton Meltzer is a good, if short, introduction to many examples of the witch hunt phenomenon throughout modern history. Meltzer has chapters on the witch hunts of Medieval Europe, as well as the Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692, Hitler's persecution of Jewish people in the 20th century, and McCarthyism in the 1950s in America.

Meltzer uses variety of sources to tell the stories of these specific hunts, but also uses modern research to give the reader theories about why witch hunts happen, as well as the possible biological cause of the Salem Witch Trials.

While I found this to be a good book overall, I felt that Meltzer could have spent more time on the great witch hunts in Europe during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, as these events were the largest by far, especially in comparison to the relatively small hunt in Salem with which most Americans are most familiar. ( )