It's All Relative: Adventures Up and Down the World's Family Tree

It's All Relative: Adventures Up and Down the World's Family Tree

<b>#1 <i>New York Times </i>bestselling author A.J. Jacobs undergoes a hilarious, poignant quest to understand what constitutes family—where it begins and how far it goes—in <i>It’s All Relative</i>, a “thought-provoking…delightful, easy-to-read, informative book” (<i>Kirkus Reviews</i>, starred review).</b><BR><BR>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.”<BR> <BR>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. In <i>It’s All Relative</i>, he “muses on the nature of family and the interconnectedness of humanity in this entertaining introduction to the world of genealogy” (<i>Publishers Weekly</i>).<BR> <BR>Jacobs’s journey would take him to all seven continents. He drank beer with a US president, sung 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.<BR> <BR>“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” (<i>Entertainment Weekly</i>). Now Jacobs upends, in ways both meaningful and hilarious, our understanding of genetics and genealogy, tradition and tribalism, identity and connection. “Whimsical but also full of solid journalism and eye-opening revelations about the history of humanity, <i>It’s All Relative</i> is a real treat” (<i>Booklist</i>, starred review).