In Jacobs’s hands, this potentially parched subject comes alive. He makes terms like 'mitochondrial DNA' not only comprehensible but fun ... Jacobs, thankfully, tempers his Kumbaya tendencies with some hard-nosed questions. Does knowing your ancestry expand your circle of compassion or shrink it? The jury is out. An anti-Semite discovers he is part Jewish and reforms his ways. White supremacists hold online contests to see who has the highest percentage of European descendants. Genealogy, too, is fraught ... It’s All Relative is a whirlwind of a book, as Jacobs zip-lines from one branch of the global family tree to another. At times, it feels like a blur of great-great-grandfathers and seventh cousins once removed. So determined is Jacobs to leave no branch unexamined that he sometimes loses sight of the forest. I would have liked less time on the twigs and deeper dives into the roots ... By the end of It’s All Relative, Jacobs feels like, well, family. Mostly endearing, occasionally annoying but always well-intentioned and, in the final analysis, indispensable.
Readers will meet y-Chromosomal Adam and Mitochondrial Eve, who weren’t the Earth’s original inhabitants but are those from whom we can trace our origins. They likely didn’t know each other, but their DNA has separately survived the centuries. They’re our eight-thousandth-great grandparents, so to speak. Readers will delight in Jacobs’ other discoveries, such as his relationship to George H.W. Bush, and his uncertain approach to organizing the world’s largest family reunion. It’s All Relative is another installment in Jacobs’ brand of learning, with a lot of laughter along the way.
Most of It’s All Relative is a mixture of narrative, research, reflection and often-effortful wit. Its factual and documentary aspects are frequently both fascinating and seemingly improvisational, almost ad-libbed, in a cheerful way ... But the bulk of It’s All Relative is colored by Jacobs’s offhand-sounding efforts to amuse and entertain the reader. From time to time they work ... unfortunately, for some readers, a lot of Jacobs’s attempts at amusing commentary and bumptious riffs will fall recumbent or all the way to flat ... Senses of humor vary so widely that it’s hard to pass any kind of objective judgment on them. But “It’s All Relative” works best, this subjectivist thinks, when the author’s voice butts out, and the research oddities and genealogical wonderments speak for themselves. Paradoxically, too much funny self-effacement can come off as self-centeredness.
Despite having no event-planning experience, Jacobs imagines he can set a world record for the largest family reunion. And so begins a sequence of successes and misadventures that Jacobs recounts in 46 breezy chapters … For all the fun Jacobs has in his excursions into his family’s ancestry, Mormon genealogical archives, DNA testing, the evolution of our species and dozens of other related topics, his project is a serious one. At a time when racial essentialism is finding favor across the political spectrum, It’s All Relative offers the timely reminder that we are all a blended family.
Nestled within It's All Relative is a project, and an ambitious one at that. Jacobs wants to hold the world's largest family reunion … Jacobs, thankfully, tempers his Kumbaya tendencies with some hard-nosed questions. Does knowing your ancestry expand your circle of compassion or shrink it? The jury is out … It's All Relative is a whirlwind of a book, as Jacobs zip-lines from one branch of the global family tree to another. At times, it feels like a blur of great-great-grandfathers and seventh cousins once removed … By the end of It's All Relative, Jacobs feels like, well, family. Mostly endearing, occasionally annoying but always well-intentioned and, in the final analysis, indispensable.
Jacobs, a gifted humorist... builds a literary scaffolding around [the notion that we're all related] to brilliant effect ... Because Jacobs is an adept storyteller, readers also ride shotgun with him as he heads down giddy rabbit holes in a quest to show our obsessions with identity ... [Jacobs has] offered a wonderfully smart and entertaining volley for how a world of mutts can get along.
Some of the short chapters are almost entirely entertainment, as when Jacobs and his wife travel with their twin sons to a large gathering of families with twins. But whether the author is being ruminative or rollicking, he is consistently thought-provoking in his 'adventure in helping to build the World Family Tree,' and his natural gift for humor lightens the mood of even the most serious discussion. A delightful, easy-to-read, informative book.
With short, lively chapters and an easygoing voice, Jacobs keeps the story flowing as the Global Family Reunion approaches ... He infuses humor throughout the book but relies too heavily on the same gimmick of his unexpected relations (he’s 14 steps removed from Joseph Stalin, and George H.W. Bush is his second cousin’s husband’s eighth cousin three times removed). The result is a somewhat amusing and educational account of the science and culture of families.
