Reviews

Faces of America: How 12 Extraordinary People Discovered Their Pasts by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

amimhof's review

emotional informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.5

moto1480's review

3.0

This book is almost a walking advertisement for the show "Who Do You Think You Are?" but it's still interesting. Gates researches 12 celebrities's backgrounds and not only looks at their family tree, he also encouraged them to get DNA testing to find out more avout their roots. He made sure to have a variety of people, so the challenges that came up while researching and the results that came out of each celebrity's family tree really differed. One thing that kept coming up though was that each celebrity seemed to be genetically linked to another celebrity in the book (weakly, we're talking 6th cousins or farther). I got the point that Gates was trying to show, i.e. we're all connected, but it was a bit eyeroll worthy in places. Still, it's a thin book and a fast read, so I'd recommend picking it up.