Book Review: "The Invisible History of the Human Race"

Not so long ago, genealogy rested contentedly on the turf of hobbyists who enjoyed trolling dusty archives and filling pedigree charts. But over the past decade, because of the rise of digitized records and cheap DNA testing, the quaint pastime has turned into a lucrative commercial industry. Genealogy companies capitalize on consumers’ seemingly boundless curiosity about their personal origins. As the industry leader Ancestry.com implores on its home page: “Join us on a journey through the story of how you became, well, you.” What country did my great-great-grandparents come from? Were they rich? Adventurous? Powerful? How did they lead to me?Answers to these questions go beyond, say, whether you belong in the Mayflower Society, or whether you are in the male line of Genghis Khan (which, by the way, roughly 16 million men are). They can upend lives, particularly those of adoptees or descendants of slaves.But what receives far less attention is how genealogy can reveal secrets about all of us, at once: the emergence of our species, the political history of the world, and the origins of the social structures that dictate modern life. As Christine Kenneally writes in this engrossing new book, genealogy’s boom gives us “historical transparency” as never before.Read more at...The New York Times, December 2014.