Only a TRACE of information (Who Do You Think You Are?: Trace Your Family History Back to the Tudors: Bk. 3 - Anton Gill)

Member Name: MI9to5

Product:	Who Do You Think You Are?: Trace Your Family History Back to the Tudors: Bk. 3 - Anton Gill
Date:	17/05/08 (24 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Useful website and postal address list

Disadvantages: Too narrative

I have now been researching my own genealogical links for two years and during this time have bought a number of books to aid the process. I bought the Who Do You Think You Are - Trace your family history back to the Tudors about a month ago now and was hoping it would give me some valuable tips on how to continue my search. I'm afraid to say however I was thoroughly disappointed.

However for the sake of this review I will start with the books good points. The book is split into three sections: 1/Discovering your early ancestors 2/Their life and times and 3/Where to go next. This does make it easy to pin-point certain bits of information, which is made easier by the fact that each section has a different colour; red, green and blue respectively.
Another point to note is that the book does contain celebrity case-studies within it to give the reader an idea of what can be found out and a rough idea of how to go about it.
The final good point about the book is the last section, which contains a list of useful but more importantly up-to-date website address. A list of postal address for genealogical archives all over the world and a recommended book list. The most interesting section however is probably the surname index, which makes an interesting read, containing the meanings to over 100 popular surnames.

Despite these good points however I must say that I was disappointed with the book as a whole. I'm not sure what I actually expected but it certainly wasn't this. To be perfectly honest I'm not really sure where the tips in the book are to be found, as it all seems rather narrative to me. Rather than telling you have to go about finding your ancestors the book seems to dedicate quite a lot of space telling you the history of the people, events, culture, medicine and so on.
There are the odd sentences, which tell you that a certain parish index e.t.c might be useful, but no real information about how to get hold of it or what it might tell you. Trace your ancestors back to the Tudors therefore seems to me a bit of an odd title for a book whose 240 pages are generally full of basic historical facts that can be found in many other locations rather than information to guide you through tracing those illusive ancestors.

Although this book does have its good points I'm afraid these are rather outnumbered by the negatives. All in all therefore it is not a book I would recommend in a hurry.

Summary: There are much better books on the market