Back in the Old World, systematic witch-hunting had largely fallen out of fashion by 1692. There were still occasional, often horrendous, attacks on the alleged minions of Satan but the era of frenzy showed signs of coming to an end. Across the ocean, by contrast, 1692 witnessed one of history's most dramatic witch crazes. As one contemporary put it, the residents of the Massachusetts Bay Colony were "hotly and madly mauling one another in the dark." Nineteen people were executed, dozens of others were subjected to harsh imprisonment, and communities were rent asunder.

As Stacy Schiff explains in her powerful book, the episode remains a source of confusion and even embarrassment: it is "America's national nightmare." Pinning down exactly what occurred is hard enough but explaining why it happened is an even more tortuous conundrum.

All manner of possible factors have been floated down the years – sexual inequality, class or generational tensions, old enmities, political or economic problems. Schiff wisely explores all of these but her guiding principle, and it's a good one, is to home in on two fundamental historical tasks. First, she places events in the context of their time. This is crucial because, without such a grounding, the intricacies and deeper meanings of the story are "lost to us, like the jokes in Shakespeare." You will therefore encounter a world in which the supernatural was palpable, in which prodigies and portents dripped with meaning, and which was inhabited by people to whom witches were as real "as had been the February frosts." You will also gain a keen sense of the muddled mental world of colonial Massachusetts. Fiercely proud, it saw itself as a religious and social beacon, but it was also a perilous frontier. "The sky over New England was crow black" and it did not take much for panic to descend on such an isolated, fragile place.

Second, Schiff opts for a straightforward narrative account which, while doused in scholarly rigour, never loses sight of the human drama. There is, of course, a great deal of this commodity. It is fun to read all the bizarre accusations of witches flying to and fro and important to learn that "rumour was the other nimble traveller." If you are in the mood for poignancy you will not be disappointed. Courtrooms "bathed in anemic, winter light" host angry interrogations, husbands petition for the release of their wives, baying crowds spit curses at suspects who behave a little too flippantly, and the search for witch's teats provokes the intrusive examinations of women's bodies. Somewhere between 144 and 185 people (aged between five and 80) from 25 towns and villages came under scrutiny. All in a few short months and all among a colonial population that, as Schiff points out, could fit neatly inside present-day Yankee Stadium.

By the late Autumn "terror had worn out its welcome" but Massachusetts would not easily recover. "What of the woman you had accused from several feet away and who was back on the farm across the stream" or sitting next to you in the pew? Grudges died hard and for decades the locals would prove reluctant to discuss the tragedy with outsiders. There was anger over the "clumsy administration of justice" and, for some, the ordeal "swept away a rich layer of faith." More positively, Schiff concludes that "it turns out to be eminently useful to have a disgrace in your past." For Americans, the memory of 1692 has served as a "vaccine" when America has allowed fear to trump reason. Massachusetts "may have constituted the best educated community in the history of the world before 1692" but this was no barrier to venom or hysteria.

There is certainly cultural utility in treating Salem as a cautionary tale, though such an enterprise carries risks. The gap between past and present can shrink, or all but disappear, and events more than 300 years ago have a habit of being seen through a decidedly modern filter. Worse yet, we are tempted to sit in judgement when, at least as historians, our principal job is to report what happened. Deriving ethical lessons from bygone, very different times is rarely straightforward and frequently misguided. Schiff does not always avoid such pitfalls but given the book's many virtues this is easily forgiven. Schiff writes beautifully, her research is deeply impressive and, rather remarkably, she brings new dynamism to a story that has been told in print countless times. She manages to tease out every detail of a frustratingly shadowy tale and, along the way, offers a truly panoramic view of life in late seventeenth-century New England. It was a place where salvation depended on communal virtue, where the humdrum and the sacred were intertwined, and where unholy gossip could so easily make everything fall apart.