San­dra K. Toro con­tin­ues the saga of the Nasi fam­i­ly that she began with By Fire Pos­sessed: Doña Gra­cia Nasi with the sto­ry of her nephew, Joseph Nasi, the Duke of Nax­os. Writ­ing the Duke’s jour­nal, Ms. Toro brings read­ers into the tur­bu­lent his­to­ry of the late six­teenth cen­tu­ry. Joseph Nasi has been in the courts of France, Eng­land, Flan­ders, the Vat­i­can, and Venice. He has mon­ey and pow­er, thanks to his aunt’s for­tune. He is close to the Ottoman sul­tan, Selim, and helped him to devel­op the Ottoman navy, which con­trolled much of the Mediter­ranean. Despite all of his suc­cess, he is still in dan­ger because he is a Jew. His oppo­si­tion to Spain, the Inqui­si­tion, and the Holy Roman Emper­or made him an out­cast in the courts of Europe. Christo­pher Mar­lowe used him as a mod­el for his play ​“The Jew of Mal­ta” and Shake­speare based Shy­lock, the mon­ey lender in ​“The Mer­chant of Venice,” on him as well. Both of these anti-Semit­ic car­i­ca­tures por­trayed Jews as evil mon­sters with­out con­sid­er­ing the rea­sons for their bit­ter­ness. Joseph freely admits that he wants revenge after liv­ing in fear dur­ing the Inqui­si­tion, but the plays do not explain his motive. Read­ers who enjoyed Ms. Toro’s first book will want to con­tin­ue the sto­ry with this one. She brings his­to­ry to life and offers a taste of what it was like to live in the courts of the Renaissance.