Genealogy Books

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Summary: A great read
Comment: The author blends his own family legacy into larger themes that apply to us all. He addresses the
legacy of his own family in a way that is applicable to all of us. Very tender, but also practical
and a little bit shocking, like most family histories at least should be.

Customer Rating:

Summary: The Frazier family
Comment: I think it's Frazier's style that is the most attractive thing about this book. He writes in simple
declarative sentences with little embellishment - exactly the way someone would tell you a story
orally. No histrionics, no deep reflections - just straight facts, boom, boom. It works
magnificently here.

He tells a history of his family (it's not really a memoir, at
least not until the end, which is the weakest part), going back to his ancestors who first came to
America. The best part I think is the first half; Frazier is very interested in the Civil War and
spends a lot of time tracing relatives as they fought with the 55th Ohio Volunteer Infantry and the
11th Corps. (He goes way off on a tangent writing about Stonewall Jackson; it's interesting but
probably could have been edited out.)

Commendable is his willingness to reveal some
not very pleasant things about his relatives at times: prejudices, job failings, embarrassments -
things that other writers would have kept secret. Unfortunately, as his family history becomes more
contemporary he comes across as more self-serving: I felt suddenly that he was writing more for
himself than for his audience. An excellent first half, though - and that style is terrific.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Life's too short for this book.
Comment: Ian Frazier is a good writer--let's get that straight. The downfall of this book is not how he
writes but what he writes about. I wasn't bored out of my mind reading this book, but it just
didn't do anything for me. I like to read books that move me and this book had a cruising speed of
0-1 mph. This book is a generational playback/story about his family. I often thought how amazing
it was that the author could write in a way to sound like he was speaking to the reader and to keep
me (just barely) reading on to the next page. This was sllooowwww reading and I thought, "with all
the books out there, I am just wasting my time reading about something I really couldn't care less
about. There was nothing too fascinating about his family story. (At least to the point where I
finally quit---about 1/2 way) I would never ever recommend this book. I would recommend sitting
comatose in front of the tv watching really bad sitcoms over reading this book.

Customer Rating:

Summary: One of the most moving books I know.
Comment: Many of the books I love, such as Carolyn See's "Making a Literary Life" and Barbara Grizzuti
Harrison's "Italian Days," are as much about their authors as their stated subjects. Ian Frazier's
"Family" also is highly personal, yet remarkable in how Frazier presents his memoirs of growing up
in Ohio, adds a meticulously researched history of his ancestors, and conflates it all into a
profoundly moving meditation on a country, a society and the human condition. "Family" is a book
that you'll read from cover to cover without being able to put it down, then pick up often to dip
into, savoring favorite parts and the rich, supple excellence of Frazier's prose. Always poignant
but never sentimental, "Family" takes us through two hundred years of the lives of various Fraziers,
Wickhams, Hurshes, Bachmans and Chapmans--the genealogy that culminated in David and Kate Frazier of
Hudson, Ohio, their son Ian, and his four brothers and sisters. Frazier leads us off into
far-ranging but fascinating and germane tangents: Discussing a Civil War skirmish in which his
great-great-grandfather Charlie Wickham fought, Frazier goes off into the life story of the leader
of the opposing forces in that skirmish--Stonewall Jackson. Throughout the book, Frazier shows an
unerring eye for the telling detail that throws situations and personalities into dazzling focus. He
also makes us love each and every one of the family members, past and present, that he writes about,
and moves us to tears with his descriptions of the deaths of his father, his mother, and his young
brother Fritz. Here is how Frazier describes his thoughts at his mother's deathbed: "(S)oon all the
people who had accompanied me through life would be gone, too, and then even the people who had
known us, and no one would remain on earth who had ever seen us, and those descended from us perhaps
would know stories about us, perhaps once in a while they would pass by buildings where we had lived
and they would mention that we had lived there. And then the stories would fade, and the graves
would go untended, and no one would guess what it had been like to wake before dawn in our
breath-warmed bedrooms as the radiators clanked and our wives and husbands and children slept." To
read "Family" is to gain a fonder, fuller appreciation of our own families, and of all the blessed
ties that bind.

Customer Rating:

Summary: A People's History of the United States
Comment: Frazier's gifts as a writer shine in this climb through his family tree. Deadpan, folksy, soulful,
urbane, Frazier captures the complexities of his family's unique history within the context of our
country's history. Lots of real people and their small eccentricities. The negative editorial
reviews reflect a collective missing of the boat. "On the Rez" is another great Frazier book.

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