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

by A. J. Jacobs

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781476734491
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	11/07/2017
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

A.J. Jacobs is the author of It’s All Relative and the New York Times bestsellers The Know-It-All, The Year of Living Biblically, and The Guinea Pig Diaries. He is the editor at large of Esquire magazine, a contributor to NPR, and has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Entertainment Weekly. He lives in New York City with his wife and kids. Visit him at AJJacobs.com.

Hometown:

New York, NY

Date of Birth:

March 20, 1968

Place of Birth:

New York, NY

Education:

Brown University

Website:

http://www.ajjacobs.com/content/home.asp

Read an Excerpt

It’s All Relative

My story begins three years ago with one of the strangest emails I’ve ever received.

“You don’t know me,” it says, “but you are an eighth cousin of my wife, who, in my opinion, is a fine lady.”

Naturally I figure the next line will involve instructions on how to wire ten thousand dollars to a bank account in Togo, or inform me of the miraculous potency benefits of goji berries.

But instead, the emailer says his name is Jules Feldman. He explains that he’s a dairy farmer on a kibbutz in Israel and has read some articles I’ve written. He wants to tell me about his life’s project. For the previous fifteen years, Jules has devoted his time to building a family tree. A really big tree. More of a forest.

“We have in our database about eighty thousand relatives of yours,” he says.

Eighty thousand. I try to wrap my head around that number. If he’s right, my relatives could fill four Madison Square Gardens.

The email gives me profoundly mixed feelings.

On the one hand, as my wife, Julie, points out, I often feel like I have too many relatives already. I’d be happy to trim a few branches. I’m thinking of my cousin David, who, for his wedding, hired a little person dressed as a leprechaun to pop out from under his bride’s dress and twerk with the guests. And then there’s my brilliant but smug brother-in-law Eric, whose favorite phrase is the infuriating “I think what you’re trying to say is . . .”

The point is, do I really want to be part of this mega-tree? Plus, the email has some creepy NSA-like privacy-invasion vibes. How did this dairy farmer know all this about me? And why should I trust him?

On the other hand, the less cynical hand, I’m oddly moved. Here I am, sitting in my home office in New York City, subjected to endless Internet headlines about our world’s seeming descent into disaster—wars, racism—and up pops this startling news about how I’m connected to thousands of other humans across the globe. These newfound cousins would likely come in all shapes, sizes, and ethnic backgrounds: tall cousins and short cousins, white cousins and black cousins, carnivorous cousins and vegan cousins, gay cousins and straight cousins, cilantro-loving cousins and cousins who believe cilantro tastes like Satan’s unwashed tube socks.

All of us different, all of us linked.

What I’m trying to say (as my brother-in-law explained to me later) is that I experienced a profound sense of belonging. I felt a part of something larger than myself. I glimpsed the Ultimate Social Network.

The timing of the email couldn’t have been better. During the last several years, I’ve become increasingly obsessed with family, which might be an inherited trait. When I was a kid, my dad spent years building a family tree. Not quite eighty thousand, but it reached back multiple generations. He’d show me the names of my Polish and Ukrainian great-grandparents. He’d tell me about their lives. How they were farmers and general store owners; one even found a niche selling peacocks to nobles. How some fled the Russian pogroms by hiding in a haystack on the back of a cart. How my great-grandfather was supposed to pick up his wife and kids at Ellis Island but missed their arrival because he was eating a second bowl of soup. How the wife and kids had to stay overnight in the detention facility, confused, ignorant, and anxious they’d be sent back to Poland.

As a young man, I scoffed at these tales. I was an obnoxious little rebel who rejected all institutions, including family. I preferred to spend zero time thinking about my ancestors. Why should I care about these people, just because we happen to share some DNA by accident of birth? It’s not rational. It’s arbitrary. It’s a relic of the past.

But as so often happens to people, I got older, I had kids, and I magically turned into my dad. Now I spend most of my time thinking about family: How can I give my three young sons a sense of belonging? What kind of wisdom and ethics from my ancestors can I pass along to my kids?

And then comes Jules Feldman’s email. It stays in my mind the next day. And the next. And the week that followed.

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

Chapter 1 The Eighth Cousin 1

Chapter 2 The World Family Tree 5

Chapter 3 DNA Sharing Is Caring 11

Chapter 4 A Great (or Possibly Terrible) Idea 15

Chapter 5 A Pandemonium of Genealogists 21

Chapter 6 Historical Voyeurism 27

Chapter 7 Genetic Jambalaya 35

Chapter 8 Groundhog Sam and My 2, 585 Southern Cousins 41

Chapter 9 Embracing Failure 49

Chapter 10 Should Family Be Abolished? 55

Chapter 11 The Good Cousin 61

Chapter 12 Adam and Eve 67

Chapter 13 Kissing Cousins 75

Chapter 14 The Greatest Generation (and the Upside of Cigarettes) 81

Chapter 15 Thank You for Having Sex 87

Chapter 16 Biological and Logical Families 93

Chapter 17 Ellis Island 97

Chapter 18 Our Neanderthal Cousins 103

Chapter 19 Family Feuds 109

Chapter 20 Who's Your Father? 117

Chapter 21 Son-in-Law of the American Revolution 125

Chapter 22 The Mega-Tree Revolution 131

Chapter 23 Our Animal Cousins 137

Chapter 24 Big Love 143

Chapter 25 The Other Side of the Dash 149

Chapter 26 Privacy 155

Chapter 27 The Genius of Isaac Newton 163

Chapter 28 Fathers and Sons 167

Chapter 29 Twins and Twins. Also More Twins 171

Chapter 30 Five Mothers 177

Chapter 31 Black Sheep 181

Chapter 32 My Presidential Cousin 187

Chapter 33 Tradition! 193

Chapter 34 The Kevin Bacon Delusion 197

Chapter 35 The Pilgrimage 201

Chapter 36 An Ocean of Cousins 209

Chapter 37 Cheers to the Dead 215

Chapter 38 My Celebrity Cousins 221

Chapter 39 51 Percent of the Family Tree 231

Chapter 40 The Melting Pot 239

Chapter 41 The FBI and My Grandpa 245

Chapter 42 The Great Surname Challenge 249

Chapter 43 Awkward Family Photos 255

Chapter 44 Brother Versus Brother 261

Chapter 45 The Global Family Reunion 265

Chapter 46 We Are, Without a Doubt, Irrefutably, Family 267

A Note from the Author 280

Acknowledgments 281

A Brief and Subjective Guide to Getting Started on Your Family Tree 287

Notes 303

Index 307

Editorial Reviews

09/25/2017
Esquire contributing editor Jacobs (The Year of Living Biblically) muses on the nature of family and the interconnectedness of humanity in this entertaining introduction to the world of genealogy. The book follows along as Jacobs, inspired by the World Family Tree project—an effort by a group of historians, genealogists, and scientists to create a family tree of all humankind—attempts to orchestrate the largest family reunion ever, the Global Family Reunion. Along the way, he charts his efforts to contact celebrities, politicians, criminals, and his other distant relatives. He looks at unconventional notions of family, attending a polyamory family support group and “nonpaternity events” for people who learn from DNA testing that they are not directly related to their fathers. With short, lively chapters and an easygoing voice, Jacobs keeps the story flowing as the Global Family Reunion approaches. While Jacobs’s event, which was held in New York City on June 6, 2015, didn’t set the record for the largest family reunion ever, a total of 3,800 people showed up to the simultaneous reunions held in 44 locations around the world. He infuses humor throughout the book but relies too heavily on the same gimmick of his unexpected relations (he’s 14 steps removed from Joseph Stalin, and George H.W. Bush is his second cousin’s husband’s eighth cousin three times removed). The result is a somewhat amusing and educational account of the science and culture of families. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Whether the author is being ruminative or rollicking, he is consistently thought-provoking in his "adventure in helping to build the World Family Tree," and his natural gift for humor lightens the mood of even the most serious discussion. A delightful, easy-to-read, informative book.”—Kirkus, Starred Review

“Whimsical but also full of solid journalism and eye-opening revelations about the history of humanity, the book is a real treat.”—Booklist, Starred Review

“In his latest adventure book, author and experimentalist A.J. Jacobs enthusiastically shares in the human quest for self-knowledge that drives so many of us around the world to search for – and find – our roots. The astonishing discoveries he makes not only reveal the compelling possibilities of genealogical and genetic research; they remind us of the common bonds that unite us as a single global family. As Jacobs’s (however distant) cousin, I admit I may be biased in singing his praises, but as It’s All Relative proves, who isn’t?”—Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

“A.J. Jacobs is descended from pretzel vendors, dwarf pony breeders, and purveyors of bogus hemorrhoid salves, which may or may not explain why I love his books so much. Mostly it's because, like life itself, A.J. is deep and goofy at the same time. It's All Relative is the funniest, most thoughtful, most original and entertaining book about family that you will ever read and wish you'd written.”—Mary Roach

“A.J. Jacobs has done it again! Having once lived the Ten Commandments for a year (even going so far as to “stone” an adulterer with pebbles), his new book, It’s All Relative, Adventures Up and Down the World’s Family Tree, takes us on another unique adventure that pits idealism vs. practicality: Bringing about world peace and harmony by finding “cousin” connections among people throughout the globe and then hosting a “Global Family Reunion.” Jacobs again opens up to us his insightful (and hysterically bizarre) thought processes as he plots the end of hate and conflict through one massive first-of- its-kind event."—Scott Fisher, host of Extreme Genes

"The Sower", the Simon & Schuster logo, is perfect opening icon for this story about human seed sown by our common ancestors out of Africa and how you and I are related to the Jacobs clan. Like AJ's previous hilarious books, this one involves way-over-the-top performance art — this time the mother of all family reunions, at which I sang "We are family" (and the rest of you 7.5 billion were expected to sing along). Genealogy is now, deservedly, tied for the top hobby, along with other ancient biotechnologies, gardening and sex. You could have no better guide than ace jovialist and awesome jester, AJ. Now, more than ever, we celebrate our connections, we read, we smile.—George Church, author of Regenesis

“A hilarious read from beginning to end.”—Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Give and Take, Originals, and Option B with Sheryl Sandberg.

“A terrific read and A.J. is a terrific writer...funny and super-interesting.”—Michael Ian Black

“Esquire contributing editor Jacobs (The Year of Living Biblically) muses on the nature of family and the interconnectedness of humanity in this entertaining introduction to the world of genealogy...With short, lively chapters and an easygoing voice, Jacobs keeps the story flowing.”—Publishers Weekly

“A.J. Jacobs’ latest book embraces an entertaining and heartwarming search to discover “Family”. His adventure is the natural curiosity in all of us to know where we are from. This book takes you along for the ride as A.J. discovers his family, and works to connect with all of us. His efforts culminate at the world’s largest Global family reunion. The reader if not already a family historian, will become one after reading this fascinating and amazing tale.”—David Allen Lambert, Chief Genealogist, New England Historic Genealogical Society

"I think it's A.J. Jacobs's best book yet!"—Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired and author of The Inevitable

"Jacobs decides to hunt down his farthest-flung relations (Daniel Radcliffe, et al.) in order to host the world’s largest family reunion. He fails to set the record, but succeeds in crafting a diverting chronicle of a country split apart and yet more self-consciously interrelated than ever."—New York Magazine

“Wonderfully smart.”—The Washington Independent Review of Books

From the Publisher

10/15/2017
Journalist Jacobs (The Year of Living Biblically) is best known for the projects he turns into books, such as attempting to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica and to obey the Bible as literally as possible for a full year. In this volume, the author becomes fascinated with genealogy and the idea that if you go back far enough, everyone is related to everyone else. In his multiyear effort to plan and carry out the largest family reunion of all time (which he hopes will break the Guinness World Record), Jacobs learns all he can about genealogy from a biological, sociocultural, and historical perspective. He explores what it means to be the "black sheep" of a family, the relatively common practice of cousin marriage, and why the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints is so invested in their family trees. Written with Jacobs's signature humor and warmth, this is a fun, if slightly scattershot, adventure that will interest many. VERDICT Fans of Jacobs's previous work, as well as anyone interested in a nonacademic look into the world of genealogy and family trees, will find this account engrossing, funny, and optimistic.—Jennifer Stout, Virginia Commonwealth Univ. Lib., Richmond

Library Journal

★ 2017-07-25
The bestselling immersion journalist embarks on a world-spanning journey of family and genealogy.For years, Jacobs (Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection, 2012, etc.) has built a significant following at Esquire, where he is a contributing editor, with articles that mix serious inquiry with laugh-out-loud humor, usually featuring the author as his own main character. He used the same formula for his bestselling books, in which he tried to absorb more miscellaneous knowledge than anyone else alive (The Know-It-All), live daily life according to biblical commandments (The Year of Living Biblically), or sculpt his body into its best possible shape (Drop Dead Healthy). In his latest book, Jacobs delves into his own genealogy and that of his wife, Julie, and he chronicles his plans for what he hoped would become the largest "family" reunion in history. Along the way, the author provides a cornucopia of information about genealogy and ancestry: how males often dominate family trees while females remain in the background, the impact of American slavery on family histories, his own Jewish heritage, the complications of working with the Mormon archive ("every year, more data is added to this vault than is contained in the entire Library of Congress"), how nonhuman animals fit into the equations, the reliability of DNA testing as a genealogical tool, and the reliance on the story of Adam and Eve as the beginning of humanity. Some of the short chapters are almost entirely entertainment, as when Jacobs and his wife travel with their twin sons to a large gathering of families with twins. But whether the author is being ruminative or rollicking, he is consistently thought-provoking in his "adventure in helping to build the World Family Tree," and his natural gift for humor lightens the mood of even the most serious discussion. A delightful, easy-to-read, informative book.

Kirkus Reviews