His appendix (okay - the book's appendix, NOT A.J.'s) offers hints for getting started on your own genealogical quest. He has some fun tales to tell, but I'm willing to bet most of us have stories of immigrants and wartime heroes hovering in our backgrounds just waiting to be discovered.Īnd that, I suppose, is the point of all this - encouraging readers to delve into their own pasts to see what sort of knotholes and nuts populate our own family trees. This one, however, is on a more personal level, and much of the information is about A.J.'s relatives.

His books are packed with fascinating facts and tidbits. I have no real interest in genealogy, but I'm ALWAYS interested in a new book by A.J. This is one I picked up solely because of the author. It’s All Relative is a fascinating look at the bonds that connect us all. Now Jacobs upends, in ways both meaningful and hilarious, our understanding of genetics and genealogy, tradition and tribalism, identity and connection. “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. After all, we can choose our friends, but not our family. 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.

Jacobs’s journey would take him to all seven continents. wondered, and how do I find them? So began Jacobs’s three-year adventure to help build the biggest family tree in history. That’s enough family members to fill Madison Square Garden four times over. And we have over 80,000 relatives of yours in our database.” 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. 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.”Ī.J. New York Times bestselling author of The Know-It-All and The Year of Living Biblically, A.J.

The know it all by aj jacobs