Genealogy Books

Brave Companions: Portraits in History

David McCullough

List Price: $21.00 By: Prentice Hall Trade Amazon Marketplace: 16 new & used starting at $5.95

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Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Reference & Collections
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 35 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The bestselling author of Truman and John Adams, David McCullough has written profiles of exceptional men and women past and present who have not only shaped the course of history or changed how we see the world but whose stories express much that is timeless about the human condition.

Here are Alexander von Humboldt, whose epic explorations of South America surpassed the Lewis and Clark expedition; Harriet Beecher Stowe, "the little woman who made the big war"; Frederic Remington; the extraordinary Louis Agassiz of Harvard; Charles and Anne Lindbergh, and their fellow long-distance pilots Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Beryl Markham; Harry Caudill, the Kentucky lawyer who awakened the nation to the tragedy of Appalachia; and David Plowden, a present-day photographer of vanishing America.

Different as they are from each other, McCullough's subjects have in common a rare vitality and sense of purpose. These are brave companions: to each other, to David McCullough, and to the reader, for with rare storytelling ability McCullough brings us into the times they knew and their very uncommon lives.

Angela's Ashes

Frank McCourt

Amazon Price: $10.16 List Price: $11.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Large Print Distribution Amazon Marketplace: 65 new & used starting at $0.01

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Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Authors
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Ethnic & National -> Irish
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1832 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Loved it, loved it, loved it. 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

McCourt's child protagonist and his over-riding optimism, his natural-born inclination to make the best of things, makes an otherwise grim tale not only bearable but uplifting and heroic. Despite the daily, brutal grind of poverty, this child still manages to experience, wallow in, simple joys. Due to McCourt's honest voice, I felt every one of this kid's untidy, conflicted emotions. I LOVED this kid.

But after reading some of the criticism here, I think some people forget that this is first and foremost a MEMOIR. Memoirs are subjective by nature. So if McCourt's personal experience shows prejudice toward the Catholic Church, or if he seems to present a "stereotype" of the drunken, morose, Irish----that's HIS viewpoint----naturally. If you want a more balanced view don't read memoirs! Read academia! (It's like reading an autobiography of a politician and complaining that it's too political).

I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone who loves to read. The naysayers included. It's not a pretty story, but it IS heroic.

Editorial Review:

Irish-American Frank McCourt looks back with sadness and affection at his first 18 years of growing up in New York and Ireland.

The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Jane Jacobs

Amazon Price: $10.85 List Price: $15.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Vintage Amazon Marketplace: 105 new & used starting at $4.12

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Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Social Sciences -> Sociology -> Communities
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Social Sciences -> Sociology -> Rural
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Social Sciences -> Sociology -> Urban

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 64 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

It'll make a city slicker out of the most ardent farm boy 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book will give you a reason to want to go visit the city, or to go out and get into the city you already live in. Her reference to the "ballet of the sidewalks" gives a whole new twist to what is going on in a busy downtown. City planners, take note!

Editorial Review:

A direct and fundamentally optimistic indictment of the short-sightedness and intellectual arrogance that has characterized much of urban planning in this century, The Death and Life of Great American Cities has, since its first publication in 1961, become the standard against which all endeavors in that field are measured. In prose of outstanding immediacy, Jane Jacobs writes about what makes streets safe or unsafe; about what constitutes a neighborhood, and what function it serves within the larger organism of the city; about why some neighborhoods remain impoverished while others regenerate themselves. She writes about the salutary role of funeral parlors and tenement windows, the dangers of too much development money and too little diversity. Compassionate, bracingly indignant, and always keenly detailed, Jane Jacobs's monumental work provides an essential framework for assessing the vitality of all cities.

Division Street: America

Studs Terkel

Amazon Price: $11.53 List Price: $16.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: New Press Amazon Marketplace: 31 new & used starting at $4.99

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Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> 20th Century -> 1945 - Present
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> State & Local -> General
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> State & Local -> Illinois

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The groundbreaking book that first made Studs Terkel a household name.

Division Street: America, Studs Terkel's first book of oral history, established his reputation as America's foremost oral historian and as "one of those rare thinkers who is actually willing to go out and talk to the incredible people of this country" (in the words of Tom Wolfe).

Viewing the inhabitants of a single city, Chicago, as a microcosm of the nation at large, Division Street: America chronicles the thoughts and feelings of some seventy people from widely varying backgrounds in terms of class, race, and personal history. From a mother and son who migrated from Appalachia to a Native American boilerman, from a streetwise ex-gang leader to a liberal police officer, from the poorest African Americans to the richest socialites, these unique and often intimate first-person accounts form a multifaceted collage that defies any simple stereotype of America. As Terkel himself put it: "I was on the prowl for a cross-section of urban thought, using no one method or technique….I guess I was seeking some balance in the wildlife of the city as Rachel Carson sought it in nature." Revealing aspects of people's lives that are normally invisible to most of us, Division Street: America is a fascinating survey of a city, and a society, at a pivotal moment of the twentieth century.

The Story of a Lifetime: A Keepsake of Personal Memoirs

Stephen Pavuk, Pamela Pavuk

Amazon Price: $40.50 List Price: $41.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Triangel Amazon Marketplace: 29 new & used starting at $7.94

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Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Memoirs
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Reference & Collections
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Self-Help -> Personal Transformation

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 35 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Mom appreciates it...a family gift 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

My siblings and I bought this book for our mother who just turned 65 and is home alone often. She needs nothing material and so it is very hard to buy gifts for her.

Because she is on her own, she enjoys quiet and sedentary activities such as reading, puzzles,etc. We thought this would be a good gift to keep her mentally alert and engaged in something meaningful. She has expressed delight in the book. We just now have to see her start to fill it out! The book contains so many different topic areas that we feel she will be kept busy if nothing else.

Great Gift! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

We gave this to my mother in law as a gift. It is a beautiful book, and seems to have an extensive amount of ideas to help prompt her in telling her story.

Story of a Lifetime 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I bought this book years ago for my parents. My Mom is now 90 and in a dementia home, but my Dad is 88 and still going strong. He finally got time to start on the book. He took out all the pages, and 3 ring-punched them so he could put each page in his typewriter to respond to the questions and then I added old photos from his Dad's scrapbook and also ones from their old photo albums. Some of the questions are repetitious and those pages, we did not use. When he only had a short answer to type, I attached a photo that went with the answer. It's taken us months to complete but he loved working on it and everyone wants a copy. At the end, I added our own section where everyone in the family submitted their own question to him and included a photo of themselves for their personalized page in the book. I highly recommend getting all parents to make such a wonderful keepsake!

Roots

Alex Haley

List Price: $75.00 By: Doubleday Books Amazon Marketplace: 7 new & used starting at $4.94

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Subjects -> Reference -> Genealogy -> General
Subjects -> Reference -> Genealogy -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 171 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A beloved book marred by flaws 3 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I love Roots and think the whole world should read it. It's an important and vital book about American history, family history, and triumph over hardship. I loved Roots the first time I read it twenty years ago, and I love it still, having just finished it yesterday, BUT...

1) If only Alex Haley hadn't plagiarized whole sections of the book (see Wikipedia's article on the author Harold Courlander)

2) If only Haley really HAD been related to Kunta Kinte (genealogists state he consciously perpetrated a hoax)

3) If only Juffure really WAS Haley's ancestral village (evidence suggests that the griot from modern Juffure with "memories" of Kunta Kinte's disappearance in 1767 was coached about what to "remember")

I found these fabrications depressing. And what's so sad is that I believe Haley had no need to lie and cheat, because he's really a top-notch storyteller.

This aside, though, I have a few other critical comments.

1) The book begins a slow descent into petering out after Kunta Kinte exits. The characters become increasingly wooden and one-dimensional. Kunta is great, Kizzy is good, Chicken George is fair, and everyone and almost everything after that is forgettable.

2) The book lauds having tons of children, mindlessly, and fails to criticize parents who have children and cannot provide for them. Haley makes it seem that having children and passing on the family name, no matter what horror the child risks getting subjected to, is the noblest of goals. I disagree! It sounds crass to say that slaves shouldn't have had children, but I hold all parents, slaves or not (rape victims being an exception), responsible when they knowingly bring children into a world of hell. (And Chicken George - a neglectful parent, to say the least - bringing 8 children into slavery? Nothing admirable there!)

Editorial Review:

Tracing his ancestry through six generations - slaves and freedmen, farmers and blacksmiths, lawyers and architects - back to Africa, Alex Haley discovered a sixteen-year-old youth, Kunta Kinte. It was this young man, who had been torn from his homeland and in torment and anguish brought to the slave markets of the new world, who held the key to Haley's deep and distant past.

The Official Guide to Family Tree Maker 2009

Tana L Pedersen

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Ancestry.com Amazon Marketplace: 25 new & used starting at $15.49

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Subjects -> Reference -> General

Editorial Review:

This in-depth guide will help you use Family Tree Maker 2009 to create a family history that you and your family will treasure for years. Start building your tree by entering what you already know. Then follow the author's step-by-step instructions to locate more information about your ancestors online, add photographs and rich media files, and design charts and reports to display and share.

Learn the why, how, and when of using its most popular features; get advice for mastering advanced tasks; and read quick lessons that will make your family history research fast and fun. All in a fully indexed format complete with screenshots and straightforward instructions written specifically for the newest and best Family Tree Maker ever.

The Official Guide to Family Tree Maker 2009 your complete guide to creating a family history you and your family will treasure for years to come.

From Potter's Field

Patricia D. Cornwell

List Price: $7.98 By: Popular Culture Ink Amazon Marketplace: 30 new & used starting at $10.27

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Subjects -> Reference -> Genealogy -> General
Subjects -> Reference -> Genealogy -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 135 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Cornwell can do better, and I know it! 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I've been an ardent Patricia Cornwell fan, since I read the first of her books, Post Mortem, about two summers ago. Since then, I've been trying to get my hands on her books, in the order that she wrote them, so as to follow the character building that she's done for the Chief Medical Examiner of VA, Key Scarpetta, and her entourage including Det. Marino, Agent Wesley, and her niece Lucy.

However, this book left a bad after-taste in my mouth. The story moves at a very fast pace, but then that's about the only thing that is good about this book. Rest everything is about average. Sadly, Cornwell tries to inculcate fear of Gault in the reader's mind, but nothing much seems to happen to Scarpetta anyway, despite her working in what could very well be the least secure government offices in the world! Just about anyone can break in, at anytime, anyone can make anything disappear, anyone can crack any security protocol and encrypted passwords - one seems to wonder how's the place still standing!

It reminded me of those spoof teenage horror movies, where the favourite quip is "don't open that door...", or "someone was lurking in the shadows, and I was alone...". This book has one-too-many of such circumstances, and I for one found my interest wavering on each of those ocassions.

Forensics is the reason I took to reading her, but this book largely lacks in Forensic Science / Investigation. No foreign material, no strange residue, no inexplicable wound mark... nothing to intrigue the reader.

The climax is high-tech, but again a little lost on me.

P.S.: I'm still wondering WTH does it have to do with Potter's Field?

An average read: 2.5 / 5

Editorial Review:

Forensic pathologist Dr. Kay Scarpetta matches wits with a sadistic killer who infiltrates the FBI's top-secret artificial intelligence system and begins to close in on Scarpetta herself. Reprint.

Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland

Bryan Sykes

Amazon Price: $17.79 List Price: $26.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: W. W. Norton Amazon Marketplace: 32 new & used starting at $13.95

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Subjects -> History -> Europe -> England -> General
Subjects -> History -> Europe -> England -> General AAS
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Social Sciences -> Anthropology -> Physical

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 56 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

WASPs finally get their due in this stimulating history by one of the world's leading geneticists.

Saxons, Vikings, and Celts is the most illuminating book yet to be written about the genetic history of Britain and Ireland. Through a systematic, ten-year DNA survey of more than 10,000 volunteers, Bryan Sykes has traced the true genetic makeup of British Islanders and their descendants. This historical travelogue and genetic tour of the fabled isles, which includes accounts of the Roman invasions and Norman conquests, takes readers from the Pontnewydd cave in North Wales, where a 300,000-year-old tooth was discovered, to the resting place of "The Red Lady" of Paviland, whose anatomically modern body was dyed with ochre by her grieving relatives nearly 29,000 years ago. A perfect work for anyone interested in the genealogy of England, Scotland, or Ireland, Saxons, Vikings, and Celts features a chapter specifically addressing the genetic makeup of those people in the United States who have descended from the British Isles.

Quicksheet Citing Online Historical Resources

Elizabeth Shown Mills

Amazon Price: $5.95 List Price: $5.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Genealogical Publishing Company Amazon Marketplace: 11 new & used starting at $5.09

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Subjects -> Reference -> Genealogy -> Online Research
Subjects -> Reference -> Genealogy -> General
Subjects -> Reference -> Genealogy -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

genealogy 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Lots of valuable information in a concise fashion. Easily transported and readily available for review. Wonderful source citing tool. Handy to carry in a notebook or file folder when doing research for review of material accessed.

Citation review sheet - not what you really need 2 out of 5 stars.
6 of 8 people found this review helpful.

Elizebeth Mills is increasingly referred to as one of the main citation sources for genealogical methods and standards. While this 2 sheet laminated card does help, I wasn't thrilled when I received it.

Opening my wondeful Amazon box (with other goodies) it was "oh yeah, hmm".

The sheet is not really worth the money cause it misses some elements of citation - especially if you are international - rather than being based in the US.

But then again, for the time, effort and expense of getting your own copy laminated it might be a bad option.

Personally, I feel this double sided sheet should have been added and available for free in conjunction with her book "Evidence! Citation & Analysis for the Family Historian" ISBN-10: 0806315431

Conclusion: Have a review yourself with the "Search Inside" and see whether it suits you.