description John Demos Overview
John Demos is an American historian of early American and colonial history, known for using detailed individual cases to examine wider social and cultural patterns. He is Professor Emeritus of History at Yale University. His book The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America, published in 1994, reconstructs the abduction of a Puritan minister’s family in colonial Massachusetts and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction.
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What is The Unredeemed Captive by John Demos about?
The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America follows the Williams family after the 1704 French and Indigenous raid on Deerfield, Massachusetts. Published in 1994, it uses one family's experience to explore captivity, religion, and cultural boundaries in colonial New England.
What kind of historian is John Demos?
John Demos is a social historian of early America and a professor emeritus at Yale University. His work often uses detailed individual cases to reveal wider patterns in colonial society.
Which John Demos book won the Bancroft Prize?
Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England won the Bancroft Prize in American History. The book was published by Oxford University Press in 1982 and examines witchcraft and community life in colonial New England.
Why do readers study John Demos's family-history approach?
Demos uses a specific life or family story to examine large questions about colonial culture and identity. The Unredeemed Captive, published by Knopf in 1994, is a clear example of that method.
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