Salem's Centuries

Donna A Seger is Professor of History at Salem State University. She is the author of The Practical Renaissance: Information Culture and the Quest for Knowledge in Early Modern England, 1500-1640 and manages the blog Streets of Salem.Brad Austin is Professor of History at Salem State University. He is the author of Democratic Sports: Men's and Women's College Athletics during the Great Depression and the coeditor of Understanding and Teaching the Vietnam War and Teaching U.S. History through Sports.

"Salem's Centuries is a remarkable collection of inventive essays exploring a wide range of topics, from the dispossession of Salem's indigenous peoples to its heyday as a center of global commerce to the lives of the Puritan descendants, African Americans, and immigrants from around the world who made the city their home. Together, these essays illuminate how the city's past, real and imagined, has shaped its contemporary landscape and people."—David Glassberg, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and author of Sense of History: The Place of the Past in American Life"Donna Seger and Brad Austin have not only assembled new perspectives on Salem—ones that highlight once-ignored Indigenous, Black, working-class, immigrant, and emigrant experiences—they have shown why these matter, even outside the Witch City's boundaries. And because the authors do their history in public, foregrounding how they use their sources to understand the past, this volume also serves as a model for how to make local history lively and relevant."—Jacob A. C. Remes, Clinical Associate Professor of History at New York University, and author of Disaster Citizenship: Survivors, Solidarity, and Power in the Progressive Era