San Antonio, Texas, is unique among North American cities in having five former Spanish missions: San Antonio de Valero (The Alamo; founded in 1718), San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo (1720), Nuestra Senora de la Purisima Concepcion de Acuna (1731), San Juan Capistrano (1731), and San Francisco de la Espada (1731). These missions attract a good deal of popular interest but, until this book, they had received surprisingly little scholarly study. The San Antonio Missions and Their System of Land Tenure, a winner in the Presidio La Bahia Award competition, looks at one previously...