Finding Identity in Family History

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It's All Relative

• About the Book
• About the Author
  
• A.J. Jacobs website
  

It's All Relative by A.J. Jacobs

A.J. Jacobs has received some strange emails over the years, but this note was perhaps the strangest: "You don't know me, but I'm your eighth cousin. And we have over 80,000 relatives of yours in our database."

That's enough family members to fill Madison Square Garden four times over. Who are these people, A.J. wondered, and how do I find them? So began Jacobs's three-year adventure to help build the biggest family tree in history.

Jacobs's journey would take him to all seven continents. He drank beer with a U.S. president, found himself singing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and unearthed genetic links to Hollywood actresses and real-life scoundrels. After all, we can choose our friends, but not our family.

"Whether he's posing as a celebrity, outsourcing his chores, or adhering strictly to the Bible, we love reading about the wacky lifestyle experiments of author A.J. Jacobs" (Entertainment Weekly). Now Jacobs upends, in ways both meaningful and hilarious, our understanding of genetics and genealogy, tradition and tribalism, identity and connection. It's All Relative is a fascinating look at the bonds that connect us all.

About A.J. Jacobs

A.J. Jacobs is an author, journalist, lecturer and human guinea pig. He has written four New York Times bestsellers that combine memoir, science, humor and a dash of self-help. He is also editor at large at Esquire magazine, a commentator on NPR, and a columnist for Mental Floss magazine. 

His first book is called The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World (Simon & Schuster, 2004). The memoir — which spent two months on the New York Times bestseller list — chronicles the 18 months Jacobs spent reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in a quest to learn everything in the world.

After trying to improve his mind, he turned to his spirit. The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible (2007) tells of his attempt to follow the hundreds of rules in the Good Book. It spent three months on the NYT bestseller list, and was praised by Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, The New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today and others.

In 2012, Jacobs completed his mind-spirit-body self-improvement trinity with Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection. It is the tale of his quest to be as healthy as humanly possible for which he revamped his diet, exercise regimen, sleep schedule, sex life, posture and more. He wrote the book on a treadmill desk (It took him about 1,200 miles).

He has appeared on Oprah, The Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, The Dr. Oz Show, Conan and The Colbert Report. He has given several TED talks and he is a periodic commentator on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday. 

Jacobs grew up in New York City and lives there still with his family.  

AJJacobs.com

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The Stranger In My Genes

• About the Book
• About the Author
  

The Stranger in My Genes: A Memoir by Bill Griffeth

In 2012, longtime genealogy buff Bill Griffeth took a DNA test, just for fun, and got the shock of his life. The results suggested that his beloved father was not his father. “If the test was correct, it meant that the family tree I had spent years documenting was not, in fact, my own.” The Stranger in My Genesrecounts Bill’s two-year quest to learn the truth about his paternity, including a memorable encounter with his 95-year-old mother. In the end, the veteran CNBC-TV anchor is left to discover his real father and a new definition of “family.”

About Bill Griffeth

Bill Griffeth is a veteran financial journalist who has covered Wall Street on television since 1981, most of that time as an anchor on CNBC. In 2018, he began a new assignment as co-anchor on the very popular Nightly Business Report on PBS, the longest-running business news show on television, produced by CNBC.

Bill has been nominated for six Cable ACE awards, including Best News Anchor, and one Emmy for the CNBC documentary Game On! In 2001, he was the recipient of the National Association of Investors' Distinguished Service Award in Investor Education, and in 2017, his alma mater, California State University, Northridge, bestowed on him an honorary doctor of humane letters degree.

Bill is the author of By Faith Alone: One Family's Epic Journey Through 400 Years of American Protestantism; Ten Steps to Financial Prosperity; The Mutual Fund Masters; and The Stranger in My Genes: A Memoir. Upcoming in 2019 will be the newly-revised By Faith Alone: My Family's Epic History.

Since 2003, his hobby has been genealogy, and he has traveled tens of thousands of miles in the U.S. and Europe researching his and his wife's family histories. He currently serves as a Trustee of the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston, Massachusetts. Bill and his wife, Cindy, have two grown children.

American Ancestors by New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS)

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