The author of the highly acclaimed novels Jernigan (Pulitzer Prize Finalist) and Preston Falls (National Book Critics Cirlce Award Finalist) offers up a mordantly funny collection of short stories about the faulty bargains we make with ourselves to continure the high-wire act of living meaningful lives in late twentieth-century America. Populated by highly educated men and women in combat with one another, with substance abuse, and above all with their own relentless self-awareness, the stories in The Wonders of the Invisible World take place in and around New York City, and put urbanism into uneasy conflict with a fleeting dream of rural happiness. Written with style and ferocious black humor, they confirm David Gates as one of the best-and funniest-writers of our time.

Cotton Mather's mythic image rests on his involvement in the Salem witchcraft debacle (169293) and on his Wonders of the Invisible World (1693)an official defense of the court's verdict and a testimony to the power of Satan and his minions. Mather excerpts the six most notorious cases of Salem witchcraft and buttresses his account with the official endorsement of Lt. Governor William Stoughton, with a disquisition on the devil's machinations described by the best authorities that the subject affords, with a previously delivered sermon at Andover, and with his own experimentations. What ties the various parts together is Mather's millenarian theme of Christ's imminence, of which Satan's plot is the best evidence. Though Mather defends the court's verdict and justifies the government's position, he also voices his great discomfort with the court's procedure in the matter. Wonders appeared in print just when the trials were halting, but it remains, in his own words, "that reviled Book," a bane to his name.

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, course: Proseminar: Imagining America: 17th Century American Literature, 8 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692 represent a cruel part of New England history. Twenty people were killed after they were accused of being witches or wizards. Dozens were imprisoned. One of the key figures today around the trials is Cotton Mather. Although he was not directly involved in accusing or judging the people, he wrote a book about the trials, called The Wonders of the Invisible World. In this book, he listed the different indicators about how to discover someone practicing witchcraft. This essay will concern Cotton Mather's arguments concerning witchcraft, their origin, and his theories about their treatment. The trials in Salem will play an essential part, because the practices during the trials show how witchcraft was proved then, regardless of the guilt of the accused. It was impossible for an accused person to escape punishment in Salem and Mather's and his colleagues arguments served as additional justification for killing innocent people in Salem.

"This work provides a detailed account of book burning worldwide over the past 2000 years. The book burners are identified, along with the works they deliberately set aflame"--Provided by publisher.