Through a close study of some 500 newsbooks and pulp publications produced from 1640 to 1660, Friedman investigates why Englishmen outside Parliamentary circles were only incidentally concerned with the political, economic, and religious questions that have so preoccupied scholars of the period. And why, instead, the bestselling issues concerned witches, prodigies, apparitions, divine curses, the readmittance of Jews to England, and an obsession with converting the Turks to Christianity. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR