Stereotypes about gender relations in late Colonial Mexico — whether expressed as academic assumptions or in popular culture — are the targets of Steve J. Stern's important book, The Secret History of Gender: Women, Men, and Power in Late Colonial Mexico. Stern unravels these mythologies through a careful analysis of patriarchy, both the patriarchy of daily life and the patriarchal practices of governance. A central plank of the study is to gage the links between them, and Stern probes the interplay between gendered relations in the household and in the broader sweep of colonial power.