Genealogy

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The Songwriter's Idea Book

Sheila Davis

In her first two books, Sheila Davis classified the major song forms and enduring principles that have been honored for decades by America's foremost songwriters. Those books have become required reading in music courses from NYU to UCLA.

In The Songwriters Idea Book, Davis goes one step further, giving you 40 strategies for designing distinctive songs. You'll break new ground in your own songwriting by learning about the inherent relationship between language style, personality type and the brain.

  • You'll go, step by step, through the creative process as you activate, incubate, separate and discriminate.
  • You'll learn to use the whole-brain techniques of imaging, brainstorming and clustering.
  • You'll expand your skilled use of figurative language with paragrams, metonyms, synecdoche and antonomasia.
  • You'll be challenged to design metaphors, form symbols, make puns and coin words.
  • And, you'll learn how to prevent writer's block, increase your productivity and maintain your creative flow.
Over 100 successful student lyrics from pop, country, cabaret, and theater serve as role-models to illustrate the "whole-brain" songwriting process.

Roots

Alex Haley

The Hatfields and the McCoys

Otis K. Rice

The Hatfield-McCoy feud has long been the most famous vendetta of the southern Appalachians. Over the years it has become encrusted with myth and error. Scores of writers have produced accounts of it, but few have made any real effort to separate fact from fiction. Novelists, motion picture producers, television script writers, and others have sensationalized events that needed no embellishment.

Using court records, public documents, official correspondence, and other documentary evident, Otis K. Rice presents an account that frees, as much as possible, fact from fiction, event from legend. He weighs the evidence carefully, avoiding the partisanship and the attitude of condescension and condemnation that have characterized many of the writings concerning the feud.

He sets the feud in the social, political, economic, and cultural context of eastern Kentucky and southwestern West Virginia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By examining the legacy of the Civil War, the weakness of institutions such as the church and education system, the exaggerated importance of family, the impotence of the law, and the isolation of the mountain folk, Rice gives new meaning to the origins and progress of the feud. These conditions help explain why the Hatfield and McCoy families, which have produced so many fine citizens, could engage in such a bitter and prolonged vendetta

Angela's Ashes: A Memoir

Frank McCourt

In this memoir, Frank McCourt looks back with sadness and affection at his first 18 years growing up in New York and Ireland. The book combines stories of hunger, poverty and social deprivation with a celebration of the human spirit, laughter and human kindness.

Memories for My Grandchild: A Keepsake to Remember (Grandparent's Memory Book)

Suzanne Zenkel

Don't you wish your grandmother had written down her life story? MEMORIES FOR MY GRANDCHILD: A Keepsake to Remember enables you to write down yours! Guided questions and prompts will help you tell your grandchildren (and great-grandchildren to come) all about your childhood and teen years; your education, love, and marriage; work, community, religion, military service; parenthood and family life; and, of course, grandparenthood! This guided journal memory book features:
  • Inside back cover pocket in which to store keepsakes, notes
  • Creamy smooth pages that take pen beautifully
  • Archival, acid-free paper helps preserve your memories
  • 7-1/2'' wide x 9-1/4'' high
  • 96 pages, concealed wire-o binding

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Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland

Bryan Sykes

WASPs finally get their due in this stimulating history by one of the world's leading geneticists.

Saxons, Vikings, and Celts is the most illuminating book yet to be written about the genetic history of Britain and Ireland. Through a systematic, ten-year DNA survey of more than 10,000 volunteers, Bryan Sykes has traced the true genetic makeup of British Islanders and their descendants. This historical travelogue and genetic tour of the fabled isles, which includes accounts of the Roman invasions and Norman conquests, takes readers from the Pontnewydd cave in North Wales, where a 300,000-year-old tooth was discovered, to the resting place of "The Red Lady" of Paviland, whose anatomically modern body was dyed with ochre by her grieving relatives nearly 29,000 years ago. A perfect work for anyone interested in the genealogy of England, Scotland, or Ireland, Saxons, Vikings, and Celts features a chapter specifically addressing the genetic makeup of those people in the United States who have descended from the British Isles.

The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family

Mary S. Lovell

This is the Story of a close, loving family splintered by the violent ideologies of Europe between the wars. Jessica was a Communist; Debo became the Duchess of Devonshire; Nancy, the eldest, was one of the best-selling novelists of her day; the ethereally beautiful Diana, married to the Fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley and imprisoned without trial through most of World War II, was the most hated woman in England; Unity Valkyrie Mitford, born in the mining town of Swastika, Alaska, would become obsessed with Adolf Hitler, whom she met on at least 140 occasions. When war was declared between England and Germany, she shot herself in the head.

The Mitfords had style, presence, and were extremely gifted: four would go on to write best-selling books. Above all, they were funny -- hilariously and often mercilessly so. In this wise, evenhanded, and generous book, Mary Lovell captures the vitality and extraordinary drama of a family that took the twentieth century by the throat and became, in some respects, its victims.

Who Do You Think You Are?: The Essential Guide to Tracing Your Family History

Megan Smolenyak, Wall to Wall Media

There is no such thing as an ordinary family. Each one has its own stories: the black sheep, the Civil War hero, the ancestors who fled to the United States, or the lost family fortune. No matter how plain you think your background is, chances are there is a saga just waiting to be discovered.

The ground-breaking NBC series Who Do You Think You Are? takes seven of America's best-loved celebrities-from Lisa Kudrow to Susan Sarandon-on an emotional journey to trace their family history and discover who they really are. The revelations are sometimes shocking, sometimes heartbreaking, and always fascinating.

With the Who Do You Think You Are? companion guide, you will learn how to chart your own journey into your past and discover the treasures hidden in your family tree. Featuring step-by-step instructions from one of America's top genealogical researchers, Who Do You Think You Are? covers everything a beginner needs to know to start digging into their roots, including:

* Full-color profiles of the celebrities' surprising revelations * Starting the search-it's as easy as pulling out the old family photos * Census information-where to find it and how to use it * What birth, death, and marriage certificates have to tell us * How to track down immigration and military documents * The latest breakthroughs in DNA testing * The best online resources to conduct your searches, and store your newfound discoveries to share with family and save for future generations It has never been easier to bring your family history to life. You will be amazed at how much there is to discover!



How to Do Everything Genealogy 3/E

George G. Morgan

Unearth your family's past by mining the global wealth of digital and print ancestry records

In How to Do Everything Genealogy, award-winning researcher and genealogy writer George G. Morgan shows how to start and continue your family history research using traditional records and techniques, as well as the full array of online databases, digitized records, social networks, and other tools. Learn how to organize and create your family tree; find documents about your family; research census documents, military service records, and land and property rolls; plan a successful genealogy research trip; evaluate sources; and other vital skills to help you uncover and illuminate your family's story.

  • Structure an effective research strategy
  • Locate and access genealogy resources for U.S., Canadian, UK and Ireland, and Australian research
  • See illustrations of scores of sample documents
  • Get past brick walls and dead ends in your research
  • Place your ancestors in geographical and historical context
  • Access libraries, archives, and other repositories online
  • Learn the most efficient Internet search techniques
  • Research and verify ancestors using genetic genealogy (DNA)
  • Use social networking sites and collaboration techniques
  • Discover and use alternative research paths to locate difficult-to-find records
  • Learn to integrate your research by reviewing a real case study

Quicksheet Citing Ancestry.com Databases & Images

Elizabeth Shown Mills

Ancestry.com is the largest and most widely used genealogy site on the Internet. As an Ancestry.com user yourself, youve looked at databases with billions of names, so now you want to be sure you can get back to a specific record or lead others to the same record; and you need to identify your sources, to verify and cross-check them for accuracy, using the correct citations to Ancestrys online databases and images. Help is at hand with Elizabeth Millss fabulous new QuickSheet, which provides rules and models for citing the myriad databases and images you use on Ancestry.com. With this new QuickSheet, youll know instantly how to cite databases that include census records, vital records, passenger lists, city directories, and family trees; and how to cite images that include manuscripts, maps, newspapers, and online books and articles. In QuickSheet: Citing Ancestry.com Databases & Images youll find the standards you need for the correct citation of Ancestry sources, as well as help in judging the reliability of those sources. For most Ancestry.com sources, sample citations are shown here in three styles: Source List Entry, Full Reference Note, and Short Reference Note, each showing you how to deal with author/creator, title, website, URL, date accessed, item type, source of sources, and so forth. Arranged in tabular format under each of these headings, the sample citations are easy to follow and can be applied to your specific needs in citing your sources. Convenient for desktop use at home or in the library, the new QuickSheet, like its companion, QuickSheet: Citing Online Historical Resources Evidence! Style, is a heavily laminated sheet, folded to form a standard 8 x 11 folder, and is designed for constant use.
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