Are you looking for a good Hanukkah gift? A good Christmas gift? Heck, any gift? Or maybe you just want to read a terrific book? Well I've got just the ticket:
Ilan Stavans and
Steve Sheinkin's,
El Iluminado: A Graphic Novel (Basic Books, 2012). Stavans and Scheinkin team up to perform a minor miracle: they not only tell the story of hispanic crypto-Jews (
conversos,
marranos) in the Old and New Worlds, but they do it in the most entertaining, compelling way possible--with a great, moving, thought-provoking, and often funny (yes, funny) mystery. This is how popular history should be done.
El Iluminado is--or should be--a model for all those scholars who want to bring their work to the public. I strongly urge you to take a look at the book and perhaps give it to someone you love.