We are family

A.J. Jacobs, a Jew, agrees with the Mormons, at least on one thing: We are all related. Go back far enough in our family trees and we will find connections with anyone and everyone. With that theme, Jacobs is off and running with his latest gimmicky book It's All Relative: Adventures Up and Down the World's Family Tree. Jacobs is the guy who set out to read an entire encyclopedia from cover to cover (The Know-It-All) and tried to obey every law in the Bible (The Year of Living Biblically).

This time he decides to organize the world largest family reunion, one to which everyone is invited because, well, we are all related. The reunion itself is almost anticlimactic for the heart of the book lies in his adventures along the way, meeting with the aforementioned Mormons, digging into his own family tree, discovering connections to the famous and the infamous, discussing some of the embarrassing discoveries that DNA research can reveal, interviewing both Hatfields and McCoys, etc.

Jacobs writes with wit and charm, and this time he has a topic that impacts us all, our family (thinking small) or the brotherhood of man (thinking big). Like many people my age, I recently came down with the genealogy bug. The further back in time I go, mostly thanks to those Mormons, the more I am struck by what struck Jacobs: We are all cousins.