Roots Quest: Inside America's Genealogy Boom, Hardcover

Description

America is in the midst of a genealogy boom. In the last thirty years the number of Americans who said they were "very interested" in family history jumped from 29% to 87%. Online genealogy sites like Ancestry.com went from being a small genealogical research website into a NASDAQ-listed corporation with more than two million subscribers. In Roots Quest, sociologist Jackie Hogan digs into this genealogy boom to ask why we are so interested in our family history. She goes beyond simple demographics--retiring baby boomers with more time on their hands--to show that the surging popularity of genealogy is in part a response to some of the large-scale social changes transforming our lives, such as the increasingly virtual nature of social life, and the sense of rootlessness these transformations provoke. Roots Quest explores the way our increasingly rootless society fuels the quest for authenticity, for deep history, and for an elemental sense of belonging--for roots.

About the author

Jackie Hogan is professor of sociology and director of the anthropology and Asian studies programs at Bradley University. She is the author of the award-winning Lincoln, Inc.: Selling the Sixteenth President in Contemporary America and Gender, Race, and National Identity: Nations of Flesh and Blood. Her writing has appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Huffington Post, and others.