To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico

This ambitious work seeks to combine conventional historical methods, critical use of published and unpublished written sources, genealogical research, and oral histories. It is thus, as its author puts it, “the first attempt to provide a comprehensive historical analysis of crypto-Judaism in New Mexico from the earliest European settlement in the late sixteenth century to the mid twentieth century” (p. 7). On the whole, it seems to me that he has succeeded in his aims, thanks in particular to his extensive research in Inquisition archives in Mexico City and Spain, as well as in other unpublished documentary material in AGI archives. It is remarkable — even astonishing — though, that we have had to wait until 2005 for a book to appear on a topic that is so intrinsically interesting and that so directly links North American history with that of the Iberian Peninsula: the history...