Pay in installments of $5.49 with
,
and
Shipping Estimate
USA
- USA
- CAN
- USA
- CAN
Ships within 48 hours · Estimated delivery Jul 22 - Jul 27
Promo Codes Available:
For Your Every Summer RSVP, with Code: SUMMER15
Description
Brujas: La Locura de Europa En La Edad Moderna / Witches: Europes Madness in the Modern AgeUn maravilloso ensayo que parte de la caza de las brujas en el Renacimiento, una guerra contra las mujeres que resuena an hoy. A comienzos de la Edad Moderna tuvo lugar en Europa una caza de brujas en la que se persigui a centenares de miles de personas, la gran mayora mujeres, y se asesin a unas sesenta mil. Qu sabemos de las condenadas? Y de sus acusadores? Y, sobre todo, cul pudo ser el motivo de semejante locura? Adela Muoz Pez, una de las
Un maravilloso ensayo que parte de la caza de las brujas en el Renacimiento, una guerra contra las mujeres que resuena aún hoy. A comienzos de la Edad Moderna tuvo lugar en Europa una caza de brujas en la que se persiguió a centenares de miles de personas, la gran mayoría mujeres, y se asesinó a unas sesenta mil. ¿Qué sabemos de las condenadas? ¿Y de sus acusadores? Y, sobre todo, ¿cuál pudo ser el motivo de semejante locura? Adela Muñoz Páez, una de las ensayistas actuales más brillantes, ofrece respuestas a estas preguntas y explora el proceso, orquestado durante siglos por la Iglesia, que convirtió a las mujeres en chivos expiatorios de una sociedad extraordinariamente misógina. Al contrario de lo que suele pensarse, las persecuciones más agresivas no se dieron en España, las penas más crueles no las impusieron los tribunales eclesiásticos, y la Inquisición no fue el brazo ejecutor de la caza, sino la principal opositora a la misma. El texto se ocupa además de herejías, bulas papales, grimorios, exorcismos y hechizos, y rememora los juicios de las brujas de Salem y Zugarramurdi, así como la historia de sus perseguidores y de sus defensores. Aunque no hubo aquelarres ni vuelos de brujas, sí hubo dolor y muerte en las hogueras prendidas a lo largo y ancho de la Europa de la época. En nombre de las brujas cuyas voces no serán oídas jamás, hemos de ayudar a poner freno a la superstición y el odio que aún hoy siguen cobrándose decenas de miles de vidas.ENGLISH DESCRIPTION A wonderful essay that begins with the witch hunts in the Renaissance, a war against women that still resonates today. At the beginning of the Modern Era there was a witch hunt in Europe, where hundreds of thousands of people, mostly women, were persecuted and about sixty thousand were killed. What do we know about those convicted? About their accusers? And above all, what could motivate such madness? Adela Muñoz Páez, one of today's most brilliant essayists, answers these questions and explores the process--orchestrated for centuries by the Catholic Church--that turned women into scapegoats for an extraordinarily misogynistic society. Contrary to what you might think, the most aggressive persecutions didn't happen in Spain, the cruelest punishments were not imposed by ecclesiastical courts, and the Inquisition was not the executive arm in the hunt, but the main objector. This text also focuses on heresy, papal bulls, grimoires, exorcisms, and spells, and remembers the witch trials at Salem and Zugarramurdi, as well as the history of their persecutors and defenders. Even though there weren't any covens or witches flying, there was pain and death in those fires lit all across Europe at the time. On behalf of the witches whose voices will never be heard, we must help stop superstition and hatred, still claiming dozens of thousands of lives today.
Shipping Notes
- Free Standard Shipping on $100+ Orders to the USA.
- Except Preorder products are shipped in 48 hours.
- Delivery to the USA:
- Standard Shipping : 3-10 business days
- If time is of the essence, please consider selecting expedited delivery for faster service.
Exchange/Return Notes
- We offer a 30-day return/exchange service after receiving.
- Final sale items are not eligible for returns or exchanges.
- To process your return/exchange, please contact us at [email protected]
- Please click here for more details>>> Return & Exchange Policy
4.5 ★★★★★
Based on 12 reviews
Sort
Product Reviews
★★★★★ 5
A must-read - hair-raising, deeply alarming, and shudder-producing
Format: Kindle
What I liked:
- Deeply researched - amazing depth, particularly of a wide range of characters (a few of whom are true heroes) and many more miscreants - Rachel must have had a spectacular research team to work with! She mentions that "there were millions of words written about the rise of (and fight against) fascism as it was happening in pre-World War II America" - but I bet that most Americans haven't been exposed to them.
- Starts off mildly with George Sylvester Viereck (a ridiculous author, but just wait!) but then shifts gears progressively as the story builds and adds in a raft of odious characters
- Not afraid to name names - some of the politicians ultimately come in for some serious whacking (see Sens. Wheeler and Langer especially). Also surprising were the back stories of names I recognize (architect Philip Johnson, for example) without knowing of their nazi sympathies and antisemitism.
- Mr. and Mrs. Lindbergh are waaay more complicated than our stereotypes of the heroic but opaque pilot and his saintly wife (she is one scary piece of work!) - stuff I simply didn't know, and what was presented was alarming to the extent of making skin crawl
- I had never heard of the sedition trials of 1943 and 1944 and prosecutor John Rogge at all before - just one example of new (and stunning) information from our history - absolute bedlam!
- As the history advances and the book nears its end, there are several BIG events that may push you back in your reading chair several times - again, no spoilers, but hoo-eee!
- The epilogue was a treat to read - again, I won't reveal any spoilers
A minor criticism - the book is derived (I believe) from Rachel's podcasts, and thus the writing has her inimitable voice (pointed asides, etc.), but as a result may lack some polish and smoothness in the prose. Some may love it, some may carp, some may not even notice it. Whatever.
If material about this period is of interest to the reader, be certain to seek out "Hitler in Los Angeles" by Steven J. Ross - its focus is a little narrower, dealing with Jewish undercover work to foil Nazi plotting in Los Angeles, but Leon Lewis, a true mensch and hero, is in Maddow's book as well.
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on October 18, 2024
★★★★★ 4
Fascinating details from the past but not really a “prequel”
Format: Hardcover
Rachel Maddow’s “Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism” recounts the efforts of pro-fascists in the United States, aided and manipulated by Nazi Germany, to keep America from actively opposing Hitler as well as to plot ways to turn America into a fascist country. The struggle to defeat those forces began in the early 1930s led by private citizens who, on their own, went undercover to join fascist groups and try to alert various government agencies about what was happening. A relatively small number of fascists gathered weapons to prepare for an insurrection. In the last chapters of the book, Maddow describes a 1944 trial in which the Justice Department brought sedition charges against some 30 defendants, most of whose activities she covered in previous chapters. The trial was chaotic, interrupted by frequent outbursts from the defendants and their lawyers. When the judge suddenly died one night of heart attack and a mistrial was declared, the Justice Department did not seek a new trial. The war against Hitler was nearing an end, so there was no push to revisit the past to pronounce judgment on those whose activities on the home front ultimately did not affect our victory over the Nazis.
Since the ending is rather anticlimactic, Maddow, at times, may try a little too hard to make things sound more dire than they really were. Although elsewhere she has described Westbrook Pegler as an “extreme” right wing columnist and “pseudo-fascist,” she quotes him at the end of her chapter on Huey Long as averring that, in Louisiana, Long was “gradually copying the Hitler state.” Long was certainly a corrupt, authoritarian politician, but his populist politics had their origins in his upbringing in Winn Parish, where the Socialist Party carried the day in the 1912 election. Had he lived and had he run for president in 1936, he might have drawn enough votes from FDR to give the election to a Republican candidate, but he had no use for Nazism. (I live in Louisiana where, until 1973, we observed Huey’s birthday as a state holiday.)
Maddow seems to imply that there was something nefarious about the death in 1940 of Senator Ernest Lundeen in a passenger airplane crash that occurred during a thunderstorm. Lundeen, who had close ties to a top Nazi spy, may have been under investigation, but nothing indicates that his presence on the flight had anything to do with the crash. The cause was never determined, but, based on the way the plane headed forcibly into the ground, a likely explanation is that it was caught in the kind of thunderstorm microbursts that we now know has caused similar crashes.
Though, for me, the book seems to promise a bit more than it actually delivers, I did learn a lot about the ties of right wing politics to Nazism during that era.
I was aware that Henry Ford was a fanatical antisemite, but, until I read Maddow’s book, I did not know that his efforts extended to publishing a ninety-two part series based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion that appeared in the Dearborn Independent, a newspaper that he owned, with copies distributed to every Ford dealership. It was published in book form as “The International Jew” and widely circulated in Germany. Hitler praised Ford in “Mein Kampf” and, according to one account, had a portrait of Ford displayed on the wall in his office when he was visited by an American reporter.
I was aware that the Nazis studied segregation in the American South for guidance in drafting their own race laws, but I didn’t know that Nazi Germany dispatched an attorney to the University of Arkansas School of Law to acquire first-hand knowledge.
I was aware that Father Coughlin was a demagogic opponent of FDR, but I was not aware of the ferocity of his antisemitism or his ties to various pro-Nazi fascists.
However, I was really totally unaware of the way actual Nazi agents in league with pro-Nazi Americans were able to get congressmen and senators to distribute Nazi propaganda, typically inserted into the Congressional Record and then sent to millions of Americans for free using the congressional franking privilege. On the other hand, I doubt that propaganda delivered in that manner was very effective. Pages from the Congressional Record could not compete with the message delivered by the 1939 Warner Brothers film “Confessions of a Nazi Spy,” the first anti-Nazi movie produced by Hollywood, based on actual events that Maddow describes.
Nothing pro-fascists did in the United States affected our entry into the war against Germany. We went to war when Hitler himself declared war on us four days after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Nazi Germany certainly posed a military threat, but there wasn’t much danger that fascist politics would actually prevail in the United States.
The political situation is very different today and, though I, like Maddow, admire the “smart, brave, determined, resourceful, self-sacrificing [anti-fascist] Americans who went before us,” I think the political challenges we face today are much more dire.
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2023
★★★★★ 5
The History of American fascism
Format: Hardcover
Quality and fierce journalism. Reviving and honoring adherence to a true history and context of American fascism
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on March 15, 2026
★★★★★ 5
Well Researched and a Terrific Read
Format: Kindle
Thank you Rachel! I enjoyed this so much, it was an eye-opener. So much I didn't know.
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on February 12, 2026
★★★★★ 5
5 Star
Format: Hardcover
Rachel is a very fine writer.
WAS THIS REVIEW HELPFUL?YesReportShare
Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2026