Tag Archive for Book Review

Book Review: If You Knew Google like She Knows Google . . . .

February 5, 2011 Craig Family History, Genealogy

The Genealogist ‘s Google Toolbox, by Lisa Louise Cooke (2011)

If we were all in junior high school, I doubt that anyone would hang the moniker “Geek Girl” on Lisa Louise Cooke.  She just seems so socially well-adjusted.  But there has to be a little bit of  geek  in anybody who could write such a clear and cogent guide to expert use of Google.

Although titled The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox, just about anyone who uses a computer would find it useful and fascinating.  The book exposes little-known tips about Google and shows how to better utilize some of the well-known aspects of this more-than-a-search engine.  She has a great idea about turning your IGoogle page into a genealogical “dashboard” and discusses the gadgets available with which to do that. The book begins with the basic Google search and goes right through to cover Gmail, Youtube, and Google Earth, among other things.  Novice and expert alike will find something to enjoy about this book.

Lisa also highlights some sources that that can sometimes be overlooked, such as Google Books.  I’ve long been a fan of Google Books as a source of historical background and sometimes specific individual genealogical information.  I was glad to see it included in the book.

Google’s capacities are probably far under-utilized by many genealogists. This book will excite you about Google’s many  services, and perhaps even  help you break down a brick wall, or two.

It’s available from Lulu.com in both electronic form and hard copy. I bought the hard copy book, the first time I’ve ever purchased anything from Lulu.com.  I found the process easy and the shipping was swift.

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The Book I’ve Been Waiting For

January 31, 2010 Craig Family History, Genealogy

It was raining as it had almost everyday about the time the mail came.  There was the usual detritus of our not-yet-paperless society and a package that looked like it had been around the world a couple of times.

“Hmm,” I thought, “this may be the book I’ve been waiting for.”  And indeed it was.  Seems I had given the sender a Zip Code that was one digit off my actual zip code.  And naturally, nobody actually reads the address except the Zip Code, so the book had been off to places exotic and mundane, but none close to the actual destination.

When I opened the battered package, I found the book had survived with nary a scratch.   It may well have been an allegorical allusion to the solid work I would find inside.

The book is called Wanted! subtitled US Criminal Records–Sources & Research Methodology. It’s the latest effort from Ron Arons (The Jews of Sing Sing).

In the Introduction,   Arons says “Whether you have a criminal ancestor in your family or are interested in learning more about a famous gangster or lesser known felon, you’ve come to the right place.”  Yes, indeed.

Arons gives several pages of practical advice on finding criminal records, but the meat of the book is its 365 page state-by-state finding aid for criminal records (he points out that most of such records are not  digitized and available directly on the Internet). In each state section one finds the name, web address, physical location and telephone number for repositories of criminal records.  For each repository, there is a table listing record types, location or call numbers, the author of the records, and of course a title and description.    Each state section also lists the federal records from that state held by the National  Archives, together with the location and contact information for the NARA facility with records from that state.

Some states are broken down to the county level.

The author has also included for every state a Web address by which to locate inmates or access a list of executions or both in that state. (The book covers all fifty states and the District of Columbia; it does not include the territories).

The records that  Arons  catalogs are prison  records, court records, parole and pardon records, and even some investigative and police reports.  He leavens the raw information with occasional photographs or documents that he has come across in his research, some of which relate to famous and notorious outlaws.  Some of these documents relate to Arons’ great-grandfather, Isaac Spier, the New York bigamist, the discovery of whose misdeeds led ultimately to the writing of The Jews of Sing Sing.

I found the book easy to use and accurate with respect to the websites and the state archives that I have had  experience with.  I have frequent need for criminal and court records and frankly, I’m waaay tired with websites that purport to give  directions to such information but are just a compilation of broken links.  Here, Arons has created a truly useful finding aid valuable to veteran researchers, librarians, archivists, law enforcement and legal historians, and biographers as well as the  occasional user.

Most people won’t stay up all night looking at this book cover-to-cover as I nearly did.   But most historical researchers sooner or later will need a finding aid to criminal records  As a lawyer and former judge, I’m glad to have this  “one-stop reference” as Arons calls it.  It really is the book I’ve been waiting for!

Wanted!  (Oakland, Calif.: Criminal Research Press 2009),

Copyright 2009, Ron Arons

Go to Ron Arons’ website, www.ronarons.com, for ordering information.

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Book Review (Somewhat): Some Family

December 10, 2007 Craig Genealogy

I’ve posted a couple of “thoughts” that I found provocative from a book called Some Family–The Mormons and How Humanity Keeps Track of Itself. Usually, one waits until one has finished reading a book before reviewing it. But because of the nature of this book, I think it appropriate to say something about it even though I’m just half way through it.

The author, Donald Harman Akenson, is a highly regarded historian, who has written extensively about the history of Judaism and Christianity. He is said to be the world’s foremost authority on the Irish diaspora. In Some Family, he seeks to examine various systems of “genealogical narratives” throughout history and across cultures. His thesis seems to be that presently the system of genealogical recordkeeping selected by the LDS Church is becoming dominant. That’s not such a surprising conclusion, but Akenson seems to warn against any one system dominating genealogy because any One Great Big System (as he would say) would fail to take into account the culturally-driven systems that otherwise exist. Akenson says that systems employed by genealogists must be consistent with “empirical, historical, and statistical reality.”

Despite the apparent gravity of the subject, Akenson’s writing is lively and the book is an easy read (with one exception that I’ll get to momentarily). He clearly likes genealogy and genealogists and claims to like Mormons. The notes on the jacket cover says that Akenson “with trademark good humour and grace, provides an insightful study of the Mormon scriptures and their implications for genealogical work.”

I’m not certain that devout LDS members would appreciate Akenson’s “trademark good humour” or agree that “grace” is a hallmark of this particular work. He uses the LDS scriptures as the entry point to assess the Mormons’ effort to “provide a single narrative on how humanity keeps track of itself” in the face of his central argument that there are at least four basic genealogical forms.

Akenson approaches the examination of the scriptures from the point of view of a disinterested observer. This is a touchy issue. It is the proper approach from an academic perspective, but believers may be offended. I have resolved similar issues concerning my own particular religion by understanding that there is a difference between what an outside examiner sees and what one sees through the eyes of faith. Faith is not subject to the logical dissection of the academic. In this sense, the faithful need worry only where the observer has missed or misconstrued some empirical fact.

Having said that, my reference to particular “thoughts” in the book is not an endorsement of any or all of them. Rather, I put them out for the sake of discussion.

I said earlier that Akenson’s writing was lively and easy to read with one exception. That exception is his choice of vocabulary, which will send the average college-educated reader to the dictionary at least once a chapter. Check these out:

adjuvant
benison
bolus
deictic
demotic
jussive
lubricious

I’ll have a complete review coming soon.

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