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It’s All Relative: Adventures Up and Down the World’s Family Tree by A. J. Jacobs

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A. J. Jacobs has amused and informed us by living for a year following the tenets of the Bible, reading the Encyclopedia Britannica to become the smartest person in the world, becoming a human guinea pig, and attempting to become the healthiest person in the world. He now tackles genealogy and what is means to be family in It’s All Relative: Adventures Up and Down the World’s Family Tree.

What started his quest to help build the World Family Tree was an email from Jules Feldman. Feldman is a dairy farmer in Israel who in his spare time is building a family tree. A huge family tree consisting of 80,000 relatives including Jacobs who is the eighth cousin of Mrs. Feldman.

Skeptical but intrigued Jacobs follows the suggestion of his brother-in-law and contacts Randy Schoenberg. Randy is a lawyer of some repute (see the film Woman in Gold) and a genealogist. According to Randy genealogy in undergoing two revolutions, DNA and Internet family trees.

He introduces Jacobs to the collaborative genealogy site (Internet family tree) Geni.com. There are others like WikiTree and FamilySearch where you find an ancestor on your tree who is on another family’s tree and soon you are connected to thousands (or more) new relatives. A check of Geni at the time showed over 70 million people in 160+ countries listed on the site.

Geni also has an interesting feature you can use to find your connection to famous people. He describes it as Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon where everyone is Kevin Bacon. Jacobs finds he has connections to Dr. Ruth, Jackson Pollock, Rachel Weisz and Barack Obama who is his fifth-great aunt’s husband’s father’s wife’s seventh-great nephew.

Geni has his interest; next for Jacobs is DNA testing. His DNA test matches him with 1009 presumed cousins including his wife Julie, his seventh cousin. Julie is less than thrilled but, as Jacobs finds, marriage between distant cousins is not that unusual.

With all these cousins and the potential to uncover more Jacobs comes up with the idea to hold a family reunion– a worldwide family reunion. Bringing all these people together he can make even more connections plus he might get in the Guinness Book of World Records. Now all he needs is a place, money and plenty of help.

The reunion is the conclusion of the book and its progress is remarked upon at the end of most chapters but most of the book is about family. What family is, all its different forms, and how would your worldview and prejudice’s change if you thought of people of different nationalities and ethnic background or even the guy who cut in front of you in line as your cousins.

The author talks about Y-Chromosomal Adam and Mitochondrial Eve, evolution, and the DNA humans share with animals. Jacobs explores many aspects of genealogical research including privacy, the emphasis on celebrity connections, how some cultures and ethnicities are not represented, and the significance of names. He even includes an appendix with a guide to getting started on your family tree.

He made connections with a lot of people gathering information, promoting his family reunion and lining up speakers for his event. Most had a story to tell and Jacobs does a wonderful job using them to highlight his chapters.

Jacobs also uses a lot of his own family history which is by turns amusing, touching, and surprising. The story of his great grandmother Gertrude Sunstein emphasizes the point that women are not well represented in the historical documents. Gertrude was a suffragist and very active. When she died in her obituary her suffrage work was noted but she was identified only as Mrs. Elias Sunstein, no first name.

As word of the reunion spreads he hears about other reunions. One is the Hatfield-McCoy event. Yes, the famous feuding Hatfields and McCoys.  He also explores black sheep in your family tree and that for every connection you get to Isaac Newton or Malala Yousafzai you get one for John Wayne Gacy or Joseph Stalin.

The global family reunion does happen, in fact 44 simultaneous reunions were held around the world. As Jacobs points out success or failure depended on point of view and I’ll let you be the judge.

Jacobs is an amusing writer and his style is engaging but he also makes you think. How differently would you react and how would your views change if you think of everyone as family?

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Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan

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Jennifer Egan began the research for her latest book years ago. It was 2004 when she first learned of the significance of New York’s waterfront and the Brooklyn Naval Yard. The result of her years of research and interviews is a very compelling read titled Manhattan Beach.

The novel is in a way three different stories intertwined. The central story is Anna Kerrigan. She is both a secondary character and the catalyst for change in the stories of Eddie Kerrigan (her father) and Dexter Styles.

The Depression changed the fortunes of the Kerrigan family.  Before the crash Eddie and his wife Agnes worked in theater and lived well with Anna and her disabled sister Lydia. Eddie was forced to take a job with an old friend as a bagman to support his family.

He took Anna with him when he could as no one caused trouble in front of a child.  They formed a close bond that Anna believed was unbreakable until the day she accompanied him to see Dexter Styles. The meeting at Styles’ home wasn’t the normal errand she ran with her father but for a new job.

Anna didn’t know about the job but she knew instinctively that Eddie wanted her to lie about the day. Eddie began to worry about what he had exposed Anna to plus his new job took him to places a child couldn’t go.   The errands ended and the bond broke. Eddie worked long hours and one day he didn’t come home. As days turned to weeks the family accepted he wasn’t coming back and life went on.

Anna is in college when Pearl Harbor is attacked and the U.S. joins the war.  She gladly leaves college to work in the Naval Yard. She is patriotic and eager to do what she can for the war effort but longs for something more exciting than measuring small parts for ships.  Though frowned upon Anna goes out each day at lunch to explore the shipyard and witness the different jobs being done. She discovers the divers.

With so many men fighting the war women are doing jobs traditionally done by men but diving isn’t one of them. The suit alone is a deterrent because of the weight.  The dress or diving suit weighed 200 pounds with the shoes 35 pounds, then add the collar and helmet at 56 pounds and the belt at 84 pounds. With the suit on you had to be able to walk with all that weight and perform tasks as delicate as unraveling a knot while wearing the three-fingered gloves.

Anna knows nothing of the requirements but she is determined to try. Her life outside the Naval Yard revolves around the care of Lydia but in her limited free time she visits her first nightclub. The club belongs to Dexter Styles. She remembers him and introduces herself but doesn’t reveal her true identity. Styles may hold the key to her father’s disappearance.

Dexter’s story now becomes part of the narrative. The author not only did her homework on the waterfront and naval yard but on organized crime as well. Styles runs his own small criminal empire and he married into society.  His relationship with his boss and his connections through his father-in-law make Dexter feel he is close to untouchable. But no one is untouchable.

Anna gets her chance to dive but tragedy at home has left her living alone. To escape her loneliness and to celebrate her new job as a diver Anna goes out and ends up at Dexter’s nightclub. She doesn’t see him but he finds her and what happens next changes the course of both their lives.

Anna does learn at least part of what happened to her father but not all of it. We now get Eddie’s story. Eddie was an astute, observant man and at his core moral. His jobs provided for his family and put him in a position to see things he couldn’t ignore. When one of his friends is murdered he makes a decision that changes all of their lives.

Egan’s writing style immerses you in the story but Eddie’s story was so compelling that it was as if I was reading another novel. I forgot about Anna and Dexter as Eddie’s life unfolded.

This is not a perfect novel. The switches in storyline from one character to another kills the momentum a little and she rushed to an end.  Anna’s life is glossed over at the end when before it was rich with detail.  But I’m being picky because the novel is well-done and an engrossing read.

The characters come alive in your mind and you can see the waterfront and hear the ocean. When I was a teen I read “Hannah Fowler”. I don’t recall much about the story but I’ve never forgotten the character. This novel is like that, the nuances of the story will fade but I’ll remember Anna Kerrigan.

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