October is Family History Month

This title enables readers to chronicle the lives of near or distant relatives. It provides methods for: conducting historical and thematic research; organizing materials; outlining and plotting a story; illustrating with pictures and charts; and making money writing the history of other families.

Thanks to the overwhelming number of genealogical records available online today, it's never been easier to trace your family history and find your roots. But where do you begin? Powell gives you tips on using free databases, new websites, and a growing number of genealogy apps. You'll find everything you need to scour the Internet and find your ancestors, going back generations!

Firmly practical in its approach yet entertaining in its style, this reference guide is the indispensable companion for all who are seeking a reliable, one-source volume to use while tracking down their family origins. The book gives comprehensive guidance on the variety of governmental, religious, and more obscure records available, and also contains highly useful advice on how to expand and reinvigorate a search when the trail runs cold. Tips on using the Internet as both a starting point and a supplement to more traditional searches are especially useful and timesaving.

With Discovering Your Roots: An Introduction ­­to Genealogy, you’ll learn the same skills and methodologies the experts use to solve genealogical mysteries and create compelling nonfiction narratives about the past. In 15 engaging lectures, genealogist, writer, and lecturer John Philip Colletta shows you how to uncover information from the long-forgotten past in the most effective ways possible.

Maybe you’re working on a family tree. Maybe you’re writing a personal memoir. Maybe you’re just curious about how people rebuild history. Whatever your reasons, this lecture series is your chance to plunge into the past and start finding the life-changing insights about where you come from.

Intended for both beginning and experienced genealogists, this guide to tracing British records provides material for navigating archives and a variety of printed sources. Early chapters outline basic steps such as drawing family trees, using census records and searching for birth, marriage, and death certificates. Others outline strategies for organizing research and making use of the Internet and other technology. For experienced genealogists there is detailed information on legal, military, professional-association, and property records. There is extensive information regarding Church of England parish registers, as well as information for tracing Catholic, Jewish, and other nonconformist records. The book is further enhanced by almost 100 illustrations of various records, wills, gravestones, and family photographs.

This companion guide to the NBC series Who do you think you are? contains information on how to research your family history.

Addressing the explosive growth in ancestral travel, this compelling narrative combines intriguing tales of discovery with tips on how to begin your own explorations. Actor and award-winning travel writer Andrew McCarthy’s featured story recounts his recent quest to uncover his family’s Irish history, while twenty-five other prominent writers tell their own heartfelt stories of connection. Spanning the globe, these stories offer personal takes on journeying home, whether the authors are actively seeking long-lost relatives, meeting up with seldom-seen family members, or perhaps just visiting the old country to get a feel for their roots. Sidebars and a hefty resource section provide tips and recommendations on how to go about your own research, and a foreword by the Genographic Project’s Spencer Wells sets the scene. Stunning images, along with family heirlooms, old photos, recipes, and more, round out this unique take on the genealogical research craze.

New York Times bestselling author of The Know-It-All and The Year of Living Biblically, A.J. Jacobs undergoes a hilarious, heartfelt quest to understand what constitutes family'where it begins and how far it goes'and attempts to untangle the true meaning of the 'Family of Humankind."

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 US 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.