Documents the role of Samuel Sewall in the 1692 Salem witch trials in a profile that offers insight into how he was swept up in the zeal that marked the trials and publicly apologized five years later.

"Francis draws on [Salem witch trial judge Samuel Sewall's] own diaries, which enables us to see the early colonists not as grim ideologues, but as flesh-and-blood idealists, striving for a new society while coming to terms with the desires and imperfections of ordinary life. Through this unsung hero of the American conscience--a Puritan, an antislavery agitator, a defender of Native American rights, and a Utopian theorist--we are granted a fresh perspective on a familiar drama"--Amazon.com (previous printing).

Biographer and novelist Francis looks at the Salem witch hunt of 1692 with fresh eyes, through the story of Samuel Sewall, New England Puritan, Salem trial judge, antislavery agitator, defender of Native American rights, utopian theorist, family man. The second-generation colonists were pitted against the pagan Native Americans and a hostile mother country intent on imposing control. Out of the struggle to maintain unity emerged the forces that drove the Salem tragedy. Five guilt-wracked years after pronouncing judgment, Sewall recanted the guilty verdicts, praying for forgiveness. This marked the moment when modern American values came into being--the shift from an almost medieval view of good and evil to a respect for the mysteries of the human heart. Drawing on Sewall's diaries, Francis shows us the early colonists as flesh and blood idealists, striving for a new society while coming to terms with the imperfections of ordinary life.--From publisher description.

Cites successful examples of community-based policing.

This collection of documents, including many previously unpublished, details the role of the Army engineers in the American Revolution. Lacking trained military engineers, the Americans relied heavily on foreign officers, mostly from France, for sorely needed technical assistance. Native Americans joined the foreign engineer officers to plan and carry out offensive and defensive operations, direct the erection of fortifications, map vital terrain, and lay out encampments. During the war Congress created the Corps of Engineers with three companies of engineer troops as well as a separate geographer's department to assist the engineers with mapping. Both General George Washington and Major General Louis Lebéque Duportail, his third and longest serving Chief Engineer, recognized the disadvantages of relying on foreign powers to fill the Army's crucial need for engineers. America, they contended, must train its own engineers for the future. Accordingly, at the war's end, they suggested maintaining a peacetime engineering establishment and creating a military academy. However, Congress rejected the proposals, and the Corps of Engineers and its companies of sappers and miners mustered out of service. Eleven years passed before Congress authorized a new establishment, the Corps of Artillerists and Engineers.

In The Astronomer and the Witch, Ulinka Rublack pieces together the tale of this extraordinary episode in Kepler's life, one that takes us to the heart of his changing world.

Thomas Loring (d. 1661) married Jane Newton, and immigrated from England to Hingham, Massachusetts. Descendants lived throughout the United States, and some immigrated to Canada.