Customer Reviews

The Genetic Strand: Exploring a Family History Through DNA

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Ball begins with an interesting idea - using a collection of old family hair to enrich his knowledge of his family's past. Unfortunately, the book is poorly organized and adds confusion rather than clarity to a newcomer's understanding of genealogy. Ball makes several errors which indicate that he really doesn't understand what he is doing. The editor should have spotted these errors, but somehow chose to ignore them, suggesting that the book was poorly researched and edited.

When Ball finds a collection of family hair in an old family desk, he wonders what the hair can tell him about the past. He explains that a DNA analysis of human hair is limited to the mitochondiral DNA, which he correctly notes is passed from mother to child. The mtDNA can only tell about a person's ancestors along the female line - child to mother to mother's mother, and so on. Ball seems to understand this, until a final suggestion he makes (p.104) in explaining what appears at that time to be a Native American ancestor in his family tree. He asks, "Could a Huguenot woman have become pregnant from a rape, and, afterward, decided to keep the girl? Twenty years later, this hypothetical daughter would have been marriageable, and with her mother's help, she might have found a way to navigate society. She might have been the strand of Indian DNA smuggled into the white stream." Since mtDNA is inherited only from the mother, this would not be possible. This hypothetical half-Native American girl would have had mtDNA from her white mother. DNA from her Native American father would only be found in her cellular DNA.

In another section of the book, Ball offers a few examples of studies of the Y-chromosome and human behavior, where researchers look at topics such as how often those who have the same British surname also carry a distinctive genetic marker on the Y-chromosome. Ball also mentions a similar study where the Y-chromosomes of self-identified members of the Jewish priestly lineage (Cohan)are examined for a distinctive genetic marker. In explaining this, Ball confuses the priestly lineage with the profession of the rabbi. He says that "...paternal descent from a rabbi has always been the method by which male Jews enter the clergy,"(p. 174). The priestly lineage has nothing to do with whether or not someone can become a rabbi. Some rabbis have ancestors who are rabbis, but this is roughly similar to a doctor's son becoming a doctor. When someone wants to become a rabbi he (or sometimes she) embarks on a program of study followed by ordination. The Jewish priesthood was chiefly of importance in ancient times, when worship was centralized on the Temple in Jerusalem. Membership in the priestly lineage is conferred by descent from a male who is himself in that lineage. Because there are a few limited situations in Jewish religious life where a Cohan (member of the priestly lineage) is needed, those who identify as members of this lineage usually pass on the knowledge to their children. It is surprising that Ball is so naive that he thinks that all rabbis are members of the priestly lineage, and even more surprising that his editors allowed such an error to remain in the book.

Sadly, Ball takes an interesting idea, and writes a poorly organized book with a number of misleading and confusing errors.

Edward Ball comes from a large Southern family with a long history in Charleston, South Carolina. Using packets of hair his ancestors collected from their children and other relatives and then cached in an old desk, he attempted to learn more about his genetic background by having the DNA extracted and analyzed. He used a variety of labs in both North America and Europe, and finished with some answers and a few new puzzles.

One of the deep, dark, secrets of American genealogy is the amount of admixture to be found in most people. There is no such thing as a "pure" Indo-European, Sub-Saharan African, or Native American, though many still maintain that they are racially homogeneous. On the other hand, many who have done a little reading and a little experimenting with DNA research themselves tend to make the assumption that the science is so crystal clear that all the answers are right there, ready to be cheek swabbed and analyzed. Ball does a good job of demonstrating that both assumptions are false. His research indicated possible Native American and Sub-Saharan African ancestry mixed in with his "Nordic" Ball genes, then later indicated that such ancestry might not exist after all. The hair samples sometimes yielded much information, but often remained frustratingly silent. In chronicling his research into his family's past history Ball also gives a good overview of the science behind DNA research, making sense of highly technical terms and jargon so that general readers can get a better sense of what actually takes place in DNA analysis.

As a genealogist with a Southern family background very similar to Ball's, I enjoyed reading his stories about his ancestors and his quest to learn more about their racial makeup. One of my great-grandmothers made a collection of hair from herself and her husband and oldest son which I now possess, so I was interested in reading Ball's history of this nineteenth century custom and how he made use of it. I have also had my own DNA analyzed and learned some intriguing things about my own ancestry. In my case, a family legend that a great-great-great-grandmother had been a full-blooded Cherokee Indian was disproved when my mitochondrial DNA, which I inherited from her, proved to be of European origin.

Ball has done a good job of making a highly technical science understandable and, more importantly, of demonstrating that that science is still in its infancy and capable of error and uncertainties. His book should be read by anyone considering having DNA research done or by anyone interested in this new and fascinating area.

This book started with so much promise and such an interesting premise---the author finds lots of stored locks of hair in a hidden drawer of a dresser that belonged to his ancestors. He decides to try to have the DNA in the hair tested to find out more about the past of his family.

However, the promise pretty quickly fades away. There are no really interesting results from the hair that hold up, and I get the feeling that the author therefore had to use a lot of filler---long long disgressions about various scientists at the labs he goes to, detailed scientific descriptions which, while informative, don't really fit in with the rest of the book, and then various DNA tests on living family members in order to somehow find SOMETHING interesting.

The most jarring problem with the book for me was the scientific inaccuracies. I have a strong interest in genetics, but am certainly a layman on the topic, but I know the kind of hemophilia that Queen Victoria was a carrier for was NOT a recessive kind, but rather X linked, a huge difference. There are a couple other mistakes of this kind here and there, which always makes me wonder about the parts of the book I am not sure of the facts about---are they correct or not?

The most interesting parts of the book for me were the old family stories. The author has an interesting family past, and he is a good writer overall---I wish he had just written a family history that perhaps had the genetic testing as a small part of the story.

Southern author finds locks of hair from ancestors. Has them analyzed for DNA. Finds nothing.

There you have it. That's pretty much the whole book. Now, I HAVE spared you:

* Tortured musings about what it all means
* Opaque explanations of all the science involved
* Long, convoluted descriptions of the kin and how they're all related
* Boring, shallow descriptions of the modern-day people involved (scientists, relatives), mostly focusing on predictable things like height, hair, clothes
* An oddly subdued, rather flattened style that seems to take the air out of everything

The author really seems to be making a living out of this ancestry thing. Now, it may have worked for Slaves in the Family (Ballantine Reader's Circle), but it definitely doesn't work here. Promising topic, but almost no real development.

The author comes upon some "hairlooms" and shares what he learns as he pursues DNA analysis on them.

The book rambles. He writes something of his slave holding ancestors and some bits and pieces about DNA. Most interesting to me were the current uses and potential uses of DNA from hair, bone, blood, saliva, etc. and how researchers characterize the patterns of human migration that DNA research has unlocked.

Interviews with living family members and DNA researchers are prefaced with some descriptions about their personal style and/or their office or home. Some descriptions carry a slightly negative tone which isn't called for in such a book. Similarly, the book ends with Ball's takes on science journalism and current students preparing for careers in DNA sciences, which are more gratuitously negative.

The potential for a great book has been missed. The raw material - hair from long deceased family members & DNA testing meant it should have been great.
However the book is poorly organized, wandering all over the place and suffers from poor fact checking and editing. EG we are told that people have 16 great-grand parents. After that I wondered what else he got wrong when talking about subjects I knew less about. Another time a woman is described as the vice-president's sister, a sentence later she has turned into the vice-presidents' daughter.
The author's obsessive political correctness is a little hard to stomach at times. I almost gave up when he said that the only reason people research their family history is to prove how white they are.
I don't have an alternative suggestion for this book but there has to be better out there covering DNA and a personal family history.

There's "genealogy" and there's "family history" -- and then there's the full-dress collective biography of a family, which is much more difficult to create, much less to make interesting to those outside the family. Ball's very successful first attempt at the art was _Slaves in the Family,_ which won the National Book Award in 1998, and is a compelling and enormously fascinating work of research and storytelling. A Georgia boy with deep South Carolina roots, he came into possession a few years later of a very old desk, a family heirloom, in which he discovered a secret drawer, which in turn held a secret trove of locks of hair from family members of a century and a half in the past, all tied up in little paper packets and carefully identified. A couple of decades ago, this would have been merely a slightly bizarre curiosity, but with recent advances in the biosciences, Ball knew immediately that he would have to investigate whatever DNA remained in the hair samples. Not being a scientist, he went to the experts for testing and analysis. This very readable volume is the story of that investigation, with full explanations of the technical background written in as uncomplicated language as it's possible to be with such a subject. (And he doesn't always get the details of the science right, I'm told, but neither would most of us be able to.) Being in many ways a classic Southerner, Ball knew a great deal about his family -- or thought he did. But as the results of the analysis began to come in, the story he was expecting to tell changed completely. He wasn't quite who he had thought he was. Except for reference volumes, I confess I don't often buy works of nonfiction; that's what public libraries are for. But I bought _Slaves in the Family_ (and have read it twice) and I bought this one. I recommend it unreservedly, especially to Southerners.

Learning family history through a few strands of his ancestors' hair was what I thought the premise of Edward Ball's book was. However, when his search for identity through genetics became more convoluted with the intricacies and fallibilities of the science, the book became much more profound and thought-provoking than I had originally anticipated. For those who do have some background in genetics as I did, don't be discouraged by the elementary principles that Ball explicates at the beginning of the book; this is simply to catch up readers who don't already have that background. After that point, unless you are a geneticist yourself, you will find much about genetics theory and practice that you don't know. Ball, by finding the personal side of science, undermines the typically impersonal way science is understood.

I was really excited in the beginning when he first got his results, but; he really got to many places doing his testing for him. He should have only have chosen a couple of people to test his DNA. Oh, well the book was still a good read and story. I enjoyed it. Thank you.


Karen Kay Ullom

I found this an intriguing book. DNA technology has become almost synonymous with crime detection and paternity suits for most people, but the author, Edward Ball, chose to do a study of his ancestors, using samples of their hair kept as mementoes during the 19th Century and stored away in the secret drawer of an old desk since their collection. Each specimen was labeled with date and individual name, and the author was also possessed of considerable historical information regarding their lives, which fleshed out the family story to a great degree. My aunt Dorothy, who does the family genealogy for the Drakes, Chesters, and other branches of our family, has compiled a long list of names, birthdates, marriage dates, etc, but it contains so little that is relevant to the lives of those listed, that it has little to offer a reader who wants to connect with the past. Here the author tells a tale of a family who owned large plantations, married endogamously by habit, preference and necessity, suffering occasional insanity as a result, and lived through the trials of the Civil War and its aftermath. What a tale. It reads like a novel with expert commentary.

The author, though not himself a scientist, did an excellent job of describing the process of DNA extraction, analysis, and interpretation for the lay reader, using the technological jargon sparingly and explaining it well when it was used. Because the information he obtained pertained primarily to his own questions regarding family members, it was a more intimate look at the science and what it can and cannot do. What he discovered was pretty much what might have been expected from what he was told by others and by documents, but the sense that he made of the past was more than worth the effort. The story is very readable and well told.