Reconnect with your roots! Adoptees, foundlings, and others with unknown parentage face unique challenges in researching their ancestors. Enter this book: a comprehensive guide to adoption genealogy that has the resources you need to find your family through genetic testing. Inside, you'll find: - Strategies for connecting your genealogy to previous genealogists - Detailed guides for using DNA tests and tools, plus how to analyze your test results and apply them to research - Real-life success stories that put the book's techniques into practice and inspire you to seek your own discoveries

Uses up-to-date and highly organized methods and techniques to show readers how to find the elusive details to round out their genealogy research. Original.

With over 120,000 copies sold, this unique contemporary work brings the timeless Tibetan Bardo teaching into current American culture and language, with 49 days of readings for someone who has died or who is preparing for the dying experience. This book has been and still remains an important tool for providing a spiritual service to a dying person as opposed to grieving, processing loss, or mourning for that person's passage. Front matter includes "Notes on the Labyrinth" (or the Bardo...) and other commentary by the author that provides insights for an American reader who wishes to provide this guiding service to a family member, spouse, friend, or anyone who is terminal. The reading instructions very clearly outline when and what to read, without any limitation of belief system--the practice is presented as non-denominational, not requiring Buddhist or Christian or Jewish prayers, but also not in conflict with any of these. A schedule of readings shows graphically how to carry out the full series of 49 days of readings, at approximately 10 to 20 minutes per reading. The book has been in use since 1974 in various editions, taught in university courses on Death & Dying and related subjects (it is referenced in a recent handbook of acting exercises, for example...), and used by hospice workers and nurses internationally. The American Book of the Dead is often referenced in discussions of the 1970's West Coast spiritual renaissance, and many of the baby boomer generation will recall it in circulation when they were in college or beginning their careers. Translated editions have appeared in Spanish and Greek languages, with editions in preparation in German, French, Italian, and Polish. There is a course available by correspondence and on the internet that gives additional training for readers who wish to pursue the practice of performing "Labyrinth Readings" or "Bardo guiding" as a service to others--beyond one's own family and personal network.

A Michigan Notable Book for 2010 One of the Washington Post Book World's "Best Books of 2009," Memoir Beth Luxenberg was an only child. Or so everyone thought. Six months after Beth's death, her secret emerged. It had a name: Annie. Praise for Annie's Ghosts "Annie's Ghosts is one of the most remarkable books I have ever read . . . From mental institutions to the Holocaust, from mothers and fathers to children and childhood, with its mysteries, sadness, and joy--this book is one emotional ride." --Bob Woodward, author of The War Within and State of Denial "Steve Luxenberg sleuths his family's hidden history with the skills of an investigative reporter, the instincts of a mystery writer, and the sympathy of a loving son. His rediscovery of one lost woman illuminates the shocking fate of thousands of Americans who disappeared just a generation ago." --Tony Horwitz, author of A Voyage Long and Strange and Confederates in the Attic "I started reading within minutes of picking up this book, and was instantly mesmerized. It's a riveting detective story, a moving family saga, an enlightening if heartbreaking chapter in the history of America's treatment of people born with what we now call special needs." --Deborah Tannen, author of You Just Don't Understand and You're Wearing That "This is a memoir that pushes the journalistic envelope . . . Luxenberg has written a fascinating personal story as well as a report on our communal response to the mentally ill." --Helen Epstein, author of Where She Came From and Children of the Holocaust "A wise, affecting new memoir of family secrets and posthumous absolution." --The Washington Post "Annie's Ghosts will resonate for many, whether the chords have to do with family secrets, the Depression, memories of a thriving Detroit, the Holocaust's horrors, or the immigrant experience." --The Detroit Free Press

A satirical reference work identifies and stigmatizes various contemporary examples of public relations attempts to make unnecessary--or downright bad--products seem necessary, discussing banks, restaurants, and canned music

In our unique genomes, every one of us carries the story of our species—births, deaths, disease, war, famine, migration, and a lot of sex. But those stories have always been locked away—until now. Who are our ancestors? Where did they come from? Geneticists have suddenly become historians, and the hard evidence in our DNA has blown the lid off what we thought we knew. Acclaimed science writer Adam Rutherford explains exactly how genomics is completely rewriting the human story—from 100,000 years ago to the present. A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived will upend your thinking on Neanderthals, evolution, royalty, race, and even redheads. (For example, we now know that at least four human species once roamed the earth.) Plus, here is the remarkable, controversial story of how our genes made their way to the Americas—one that’s still being written, as ever more of us have our DNA sequenced. Rutherford closes with “A Short Introduction to the Future of Humankind,” filled with provocative questions that we’re on the cusp of answering: Are we still in the grasp of natural selection? Are we evolving for better or worse? And . . . where do we go from here?

The Fine Rolls were the earliest rolls kept by the English royal chancery. Recording offers of money to the king for all manner of concessions and favours, they are central to the study of political, governmental, legal, social and economic history. The reign of Henry III (1216-1272) is a particularly rich period for surviving documents; there are some 56 rolls preserved in the National Archives, one for each regnal year. However, despite the light they shed on politics, government, and society, they have never previously been properly edited or published, and these fully-indexed volumes - covering the period up to 1248 - will therefore be widely welcomed. The Latin rolls are presented in English translation, with all identifiable place-names modernised, although the original forms are preserved; and each volume includes full person, place and subject indexes. The years covered in this volume were ones of momentous political significance, witnessing strident criticisms of the king's policies in parliament (the name now appearing for the first time), and the drawing up in 1244 of an abortive `Paper Constitution' which foreshadowed the revolutionary reforms of 1258. The rolls throw light on the policies which provoked this opposition, while also revealing much about the personality of the king, one entry recording the joke Henry plaed on his clerk, Peter the Poitevin, on the voyage home from Gascony in 1243.

City of Remembering represents a rich testament to the persistence of a passionate form of public history. In exploring one particular community of family historians in New Orleans, Susan Tucker reveals how genealogists elevate a sort of subterranean foundation of the city--sepia photographs of the Vieux Carré, sturdy pages of birth registrations from St. Louis Cathedral, small scraps of the earliest French Superior Council records, elegant and weighty leaves of papers used by notaries, and ledgers from the judicial deliberations of the Illustrious Spanish Cabildo. They also explore coded letters left by mistake, accounts carried over oceans, and gentle prods of dying children to be counted and thus to be remembered. Most of all, the family historians speak of continual beginnings, both in the genesis of their own research processes, but also of American dreams that value the worth of every individual life. The author, an archivist who has worked for over thirty years asking questions about how records figure in the lives of individuals and cultures, also presents a national picture of genealogy's origins, uses, changing forms, and purposes. Tucker examines both the past and the present and draws from oral history interviews, ethnographic fieldwork, and archival research. Illustrations come from individuals, archives, and libraries in New Orleans; Richmond; Washington, DC; and Salt Lake City, as well as Massachusetts and Wisconsin, demonstrating the contrasts between regions and how those practitioners approach their work in each setting. Ultimately, Tucker shows that genealogy is more than simply tracing lineage--the pursuit becomes a fascinating window into people, neighborhoods, and the daily life of those individuals who came before us.

The author chronicles her search for her ancestors, tracing her family's history through their everyday lives as servants, sailors, and farm workers.

“Family history begins with missing persons,