Why are you a historian of Early America and the Atlantic globe?
I had a ‘conversion experience’ in graduate college reviewing a 1765 pamphlet by James Otis, Jr, a Boston radical. It was as though he spoke with me via the centuries.
What’s one of the most important lesson background has educated you?
Don’t make presumptions.
Which history publication has had the best impact on you?
Not a publication, however a short article: Joan W. Scott’s ‘Gender: A Useful Group of Historic Evaluation’ (1986
What publication in your area should everyone check out?
Bernard Bailyn’s biography of Thomas Hutchinson.
Which moment would certainly you most like to go back to?
The Salem witch tests, in 1692 Many files have not survived so particular essential concerns can not be answered.
Which chronicler has had the best influence on you?
My coach, Bernard Bailyn.
Which individual in history would you most like to have satisfied?
Abigail Adams.
How many languages do you have?
Two, English and French (with some ‘traveler’ Spanish).
What is the most usual false impression about your area?
That it only studies Puritan New England.
What’s one of the most interesting field in background today?
Early Atlantic and Pacific globe.
What historical subject have you changed your mind on?
Reviewing documents from 1692 convinced me that the Indian war then occurring to the north of Salem was critical to the expansion and perpetuation of the witchcraft situation.
Who is the most underrated person in history …
Judith Sargent Murray.
… and one of the most overrated?
Alexander Hamilton.
Exists a crucial historical message you have not check out?
Plutarch’s Lives
What’s your preferred archive?
The National Archives at Kew.
What’s the best museum?
National Museum of African American Background, part of the Smithsonian in Washington, DC.
What modern technology has transformed the world one of the most?
Birth control.
Recommend us a historical story …
John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor ; he used initial papers to remarkably recreate life in 17 th-century Maryland
… and a historical drama?
Arthur Miller, The Crucible
You can resolve one historic enigma. What is it?
Locating the full court records for the Salem witch tests.
Mary Beth Norton is the Mary Donlon Alger Professor Emerita at Cornell College and the author of I Humbly Ask Your Speedy Response’: Letters on Love and Marital Relationship from the World’s First Personal Recommendations Column (Princeton College Press,2025 She initially created for Background Today in 1968