General Books

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!

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

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.

To Our Children's Children: Preserving Family Histories for Generations to Come

Bob Greene, D. G. Fulford

Amazon Price: $12.89 List Price: $18.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Doubleday Amazon Marketplace: 119 new & used starting at $0.01

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Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General AAS
Subjects -> Parenting & Families -> Parenting -> General AAS
Subjects -> Parenting & Families -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Useful, Helpful, Good Book! 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Not only is this a thoughtfully written and organized book, but this is also a handy little book. It's small size easily fits into a backpack or overnight bag. I put the book and a really good gel pen and a pad of paper into a gallon-sized Ziplock-type baggie so that I can write anytime, anywhere. I always take it with me to the beach and often take it with me on overnight trips, too, finishing one question per trip. I randomly open the book, choose an appropriate question, close the book and start writing whatever comes to mind about the subject.
It is surprising how the questions in the book really make one think back. One time I took my 18-year-old son to the beach with me. I showed him the book, we each chose a question and wrote for over an hour, sitting amongst the grasses in the sun and wind. I discovered he was definitely not too young to write down his history! Yes, I hand-write the entries and then transcribe them later with a word processor. A workbook or journal would be too space-restricting for me, and no way can I do a question per day!
I'm okay with not answering all the questions in the book. It is nice to know that even if I don't get very far in the book, my three children and my siblings will know me a lot better than if I never answered one. If I had no children, I would write anyway because you just never know who would be touched by your life. This is a must-have book for anyone wanting to pass some history down because it makes it so much easier to do. This book made it easy enough for me, the single mom with two jobs, to start a personal history!

Editorial Review:

A warm, accessible, step-by-step guide to creating precious personal histories from the memories of older people, by the best-selling author of Hang Time and his sister, journalist D. G. Fulford.

The Family Tree Problem Solver: Proven Methods for Scaling the Inevitable Brick Wall

Marsha Hoffman Rising

Amazon Price: $13.59 List Price: $19.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Family Tree Books Amazon Marketplace: 36 new & used starting at $9.98

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Subjects -> Professional & Technical -> Architecture -> Reference
Subjects -> Reference -> Genealogy -> General
Subjects -> Reference -> Genealogy -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

No Index 2 out of 5 stars.
6 of 9 people found this review helpful.

As a genealogy reference or guide I found this book to be a dud.

It has almost the worst Index I have ever seen. Sources that are mentioned in the text are not in the index nor clearly explained.

As an example the source I know as the "Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature" was mentioned, more than once, under an odd acronym and I did not find any explanation or comment on the acronym or the different title.

Editorial Review:

Complications arising from incomplete or missing records, census irregularities and individuals of the same name occur more often than non-genealogists might think. The author, a respected genealogist, helps beginners break through these "brick walls" by breaking down each researcher's common problem into a chapter with straightforward solutions. Readers will: Go straight to the answers they need without wading through theory or irrelevant records overviews; Find explanations and case studies easily understood by beginning genealogists, yet still useful for more experienced researchers; Learn what NOT to do in research to avoid hitting brick walls in the future; The result is the best and most accessible book on the market about overcoming obstacles, from Family Tree Magazine and Family Tree Books, the sources of genealogy's most popular publications.

On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family

Lisa See

Amazon Price: $10.85 List Price: $15.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Vintage Amazon Marketplace: 85 new & used starting at $6.49

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Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Ethnic & National -> Chinese
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Historical -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Historical -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 32 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A Scrutable Family Success 5 out of 5 stars.
15 of 15 people found this review helpful.

There's not much magic realism or mystic exoticism about this blunt, detailed, multi-generational history of an immigrant family. If you're looking for a novel, you'll find that Lisa See has written several. I repeat, this is a history, and it will be of interest chiefly to historians and other social scientists, professional or arm-chair.

Ms. See's great-great-grandfather arrived in America in 1867. The shabby treatment that he and other Chinese immigrants received is part of American history, but here in this book it becomes more vivid because See includes the reader in her "family album." Suffice it to say that the Fong/See family shrugged off indignities, worked hard, brought kinfolk to share the work despite arbitrary and unfair hurdles, took root in America, and succeeded more or less to the measure of their immigrant dreams. So it was with my mother's immigrant family from North Europe, and so it has been with every immigrant complement to America's cultural universality. Quite a few of the Fong/See second-comers spent time at the detention center of Angel Island, as described in the book "Island" which I reviewed a few days ago.

The drama in this history of the branching See family - what makes this book memorable - is a love story, the secret and perilous marriage of Fong See, the son of the 1867 immigrant, to a woman of European heritage, Letticie Pruett. Interracial marriage was illegal for decades in California, as in many states, and the penalties were a lot more severe than mere annulment. The Fong See clan ran the risk of deportation, and the couple had reason to fear ostracism and personal violence.

There's a sheaf of family photos in the center of the book. There's a snapshot of Richard See - fourth generation, I believe - with his buddies in Levis and Pendletons, getting ready for a fishing trip. Then there's Lisa herself as a girl in Chinese silks, but gasp! Lisa has wide European eyes, long blonde hair, and freckles!

My mother's sister and her Norwegian-American husband Jim, the last of my Minnesota kin to live on a homestead farm, came to visit me in San Francisco in the 1970s. One evening I took them, with other relatives and friends, to a Chinese restaurant. Jim is not what you'd call loquacious; he was sitting with his back to the room and paying more heed to the talk at other tables than to us. Just behind him, a family was talking about visits to colleges, arguing the merits of Cal Tech versus MIT. Jim got curious and turned around - discretely? oh yeah! - to see what the family looked like. Then he gaped at me and whispered "them folks are Chinese!" "Well," said I, "what do you expect in a Chinese restaurant?" "But they're speakin' English!" quoth he.

The heart and soul of Lisa See's history of her extended family is exactly what my uncle didn't understand. The Chinese who came to America were not insidious strangers and inscrutable menaces to European American culture. They were just plain folk.

Editorial Review:

Out of the stories heard in her childhood in Los Angeles's Chinatown and years of research, See has constructed this sweeping chronicle of her Chinese-American family, a work that takes in stories of racism and romance, entrepreneurial genius and domestic heartache, secret marriages and sibling rivalries, in a powerful history of two cultures meeting in a new world. 82 photos.

Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace

Elizabeth Shown Mills

Amazon Price: $39.17 List Price: $49.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Genealogical Pub Co Amazon Marketplace: 19 new & used starting at $38.93

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Subjects -> History -> Historical Study -> Historiography
Subjects -> Reference -> Genealogy -> Online Research
Subjects -> Reference -> Genealogy -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Evidence Explained is the definitive guide to the citation and analysis of historical sources. It begins with a simple question: Why do we invest so much of our energy into the citation of sources? Followed by the intriguing answer: Because all sources are not created equal. As a citation guide, Evidence Explained is built on this simple question and answer. According to the author, there are no historical resources we can trust at face value. Records simply offer evidence, and their assertions may or may not be true. To decide what actually happened, we must understand those records. To analyze that evidence and judge what to believe, we also need particular facts about those records. Thus, Evidence Explained has two principal uses: it provides citation models for most historical sources especially original materials not covered by classic citation guides such as The Chicago Manual of Style. Beyond that it can help us understand each type of record and identify each in such detail that we and our readers will know not only where to go to find our source, but, equally important, the nature of that source so that the evidence can be better interpreted and the accuracy of our conclusions properly appraised. Highlights Covers all contemporary and electronic sources not discussed in traditional style manuals, including digital, audio, and video sources Explains citation principals and includes more than 1,000 citation models for virtually every source type Shows readers where to go to find their sources and how to describe them and evaluate them Teaches readers to separate facts from assertions and theory from proof in the evaluation of evidence. Most importantly, Evidence Explained discusses source citations for every known class of records, including microfilm and microfiche, and records created by the new digital media: Websites Blogs Digital books and journals DVDs CDs Audio files Podcasts Everyone Needs This Book -Carry it around and consult it for the correct citation of any source you come across -Keep it constantly at your side to help you identify sources -Use it to evaluate digital and Internet sources -Make it your standard for citing sources and evaluating evidence in your day-to-day research

The 100: A Ranking Of The Most Influential Persons In History

Michael H. Hart

Amazon Price: $15.30 List Price: $22.50 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Citadel Amazon Marketplace: 50 new & used starting at $4.41

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Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Historical -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Historical -> General AAS
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 85 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

The 100: A ranking of the most Influential persons in History 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This is an eye opener about the truth, by the world renowned philosophers and historians. Excellent, everyone should read this book and know the reality.

I continue to read this book over and over 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

One may not agree with the order of the individuals in Michael H. Hart's list. This is expected. The most important things this book did for me was to give me biographies of important people(many of whom I never heard of) and more importantly a timeline of history. One gets a better feel of how history unfolds when reading The 100 in chronological order. I also have the 1978 edition. It's interesting to note that in the 14 years between the two editions individuals moved up or down or fell off the list. Such is the case with several Communist thinkers and leaders. After the fall of the Berlin Wall Communism has lost much of it's influence. In reality its influence lasted only about 70 years. I've kept this book in my "bathroom library" for 15 years. It gets a lot of comments from guests who peek at it during their short "visit" on the throne.

Editorial Review:

A list of the one hundred most influential people in history features descriptions of the careers, contributions, and accomplishments of the political and religious leaders, inventors, writers, artists, and others who changed the course of history. Simultaneous.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Genealogy, 2nd Edition

Christine Rose, Kay Germain Ingalls

Amazon Price: $12.89 List Price: $18.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Alpha Amazon Marketplace: 42 new & used starting at $10.59

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

I Needed a Complete Idiots Guide to Online Genealogy! 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Christine Rose's "The Complete Idiots's Guide to Online Genealogy" made me finally move from, "I am going to do a genealogic study of my father's family", to "I have been working on this project for two years, and am truly enjoying the experience".

The book is well organized, and easy to read and understand. I have in the past 5 years developed a memory problem that will not get better. I had become so afraid failure, I did not want to attempt learning something new again. I used "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Computers" years ago, and found it a great way to quickly ground myself in the basics. When I saw Ms. Rose's book, I knew it was my best opportunity.

I now have numerous books concerning genealogy, but "Idiot's" is dog earred and still the first book on the shelf. I would recommend this to anyone who wants to learn family history and genealogy and how to put together a family tree. Especially those who do not have the inside lingo.

Shari Peavy

Editorial Review:

This user-friendly volume offers readers an opportunity to understand the craft of genealogy, explore their roots, perform online research, and begin to discover their true identities. Includes new information on the release of the 1930 census, the pros and cons of online research, and creating family trees.

Your Guide to Cemetery Research

Sharon Debartolo Carmack

Amazon Price: $13.59 List Price: $19.99 Usually ships in 1 to 3 weeks By: Betterway Books Amazon Marketplace: 22 new & used starting at $5.22

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Subjects -> Home & Garden -> Antiques & Collectibles -> General
Subjects -> Home & Garden -> Antiques & Collectibles -> General AAS
Subjects -> Professional & Technical -> Architecture -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Excellent book for cemetery enthusiasts and genealogists alike 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

This is the book I recommend to everyone who takes my Cemetery Art classes. There is information on how to use cemeteries as research, how to research cemeteries, how to perform gravestone rubbings properly, how to even make a cast of a gravestone, gravestone symbolism and so much more. It's the best book on cemetery research I've come across. Sharon's writing is friendly and inviting. This is a MUST!

Your Guide to Cemetery Research 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Your Guide to Cemetery Research is clearly written and comprehensive. It is an important tool for the geneologist or historian and includes many resource materials. It will be valuable to me in writing a series of articles on an important historical cemetery. Clear and cogent writing.

Editorial Review:

Your Guide to Cemetery Research is a comprehensive, in-depth resource that's perfect for genealogists, researchers and historians. It covers everything from cemetery and death-related terminology to clues offered by headstone art, and cemeteries' role in our culture and history. This guide also examines the funeral customs of various ethnic groups and includes a social history of death that reveals both the usual and unusual ways in which readers' ancestors coped with and celebrated death.