Fear and Power
Culture | Scare-brained How fear has shaped human affairs A new history argues that power depends on frightening people Sep 9th 2023 Fear: An Alternative History of the World. By Robert Peckham. Profile Books; 448 pages; £25 O ne of the best-selling books of all time was about witches. It was not a cheerful romp like the Harry Potter novels. Instead, it was a serious instruction manual, explaining how to identify, capture, torture confessions from—and eventually kill—Satan’s handmaidens. Published in 1486, “Malleus Maleficarum” (Hammer of Witches) reputedly sold more copies over the next two centuries than any book bar the Bible. As Robert Peckham, a fellow at the Royal Historical Society in London, writes in “Fear: An Alternative History of the World”, anxiety about witches sprang from ignorance. Knowing nothing of microbes, people guessed that misfortunes such as disease were caused by magic. Yet their fear could be manipulated for political pur...