Cottonwood Roots - Tapa dura

"[This book] is like taking a long car ride with an extremely knowledgeable yet good-natured uncle, whose purpose in bringing you along on the trip was not just to enlist you in some ancestral sleuthing, but also to give you a seminar-on-wheels across a vast array of historical and sociological topics." Dayton Duncan, author of "Out West: An American Journey"--Dayton Duncan"

This account of the author's journey proceeds from his birthplace in Broken Bow, Nebraska, eastward across the Midwest to New York State and back into time as he carries out genealogical research on his family. His findings along the way give rise to diverse reflections, from courthouse architecture to the financial and social stresses of "proving up" land claims. The reader becomes a traveling companion, a party to fascinating and thought-provoking discourse on the history that is our common heritage, as well as the stages of birth, growth, individual life, death, and then attenuation in the memory of our descendants.Genealogy may be the folk ancestor worship of Americans, and Luther leads us gracefully to an understanding of what we can learn from such a practice, and why it can satisfy an important need. This book is a pleasant reminder that what we term a "familiar essay" still has its able practitioners, and therefore retains its power to please and to instruct."