To give an idea of the range of topics addressed in the 100 tautly written, yet accessible, signed entries (each about three or four pages long, with references and further reading lists), here's a sampling of topics: aesthetics, assimilation, curanderismo, environmentalism, Islam, Jews, justice, language, mission system, reconquista, sexuality, spiritual hybridity, transnationalism, US political parties, and Virgin Mary.

IT MAY SURPRISE RED-WHITE-AND-BLUE AMERICANS FIXATED on preventing the Hispanic reconquista of the Anglo Norte, but many of the folks they howl most about agree with them.

The musicians that were at first imported to Cordoba and Granada from Baghdad and Damascus evolved the Mowashahat tradition of chanted devotional poetry which the refugees from the reconquista have made native not only to Fez but to Aleppo.