Salem village, that pious, devout settlement at the very edge of white civilisation, had displayed - three centuries before the Russo-American rivalry and the issues it raised - what can only be called a kind of built-in pestilence nestled in the human mind, a fatality forever awaiting the right conditions for its always unique, forever unprecedented outbreak of distrust, alarm, suspicion and murder.

"The Crucible in History" is one of the three essays contained in this collection but is surely the reason for its publication, two other short essays "Behind the Price" and "Salesman at Fifty" deal with "The Price" and "Death of a Salesman" respectively but it is to the play of 1953 "The Crucible" that Miller dedicates his attention. It is not a dissertation on the art and technique of writing one of the most popular plays of the twentieth century but rather a discussion of the climate in the United States which eventually compelled Miller to write The Crucible. In many places autobiographical, Miller talks of the Cold War paranoia in McArthyist America which led to many artists having their loyalty questioned. In drawing parallels to the Salem Witch Trials, Miller describes a climate in which the only defense is often to accuse fellow artists, to provide information to the inquisition like committees charged with checking communist influence or as some people must have sincerely believed, uncovering a vast communist conspiracy.

There are no passions quite as hot and pleasurable as those of the deluded. Compared to the bliss of delusion, its vivid colours, blazing lights, explosions, whistles and sheer liberating joys, the search for evidence is a deadly bore.

Miller's essay discusses his first intimations that the Salem witch trials might provide a suitable stage for the story of his own times. In his research of the Salem Witch Trials he discusses the time when "spectral evidence" is ruled admissible. Spectral evidence had been carefully excluded from the prosecutorial armory by judges and lawyers as being manifestly open to fabrication.

With the entrance of Spectral Evidence the air quickly filled with malign spirits of those identified by good Christians as confederates of the Beast, and with this of course, the Devil himself really did dance happily into Salem village and proceeded to take the place apart.

It was Tarkovski who admonished the explanation of art in any form. Those looking for a "how" need not bother with this work. Those looking for a "why" will find this slim volume a great testament to two extraordinary periods in American history and the art it inspired.