Kindle Book Review: Annie's Ghosts

Annie's Ghosts by Steve Luxenberg was one of the first books I purchased for my Kindle. I've been reading it off and on for the past several months. Although my reading of this book has been sporadic, it truly is a page-turner. Or page-clicker if you're a Kindle user.

Annie's Ghosts is part genealogy, part investigative reporting, part memoir and the author tells a tale of discovering a long kept family secret. While not necessarily a genealogy book, I believe that most genealogists will find the story fascinating. Luxenberg's research techniques provide a good solid foundation that any family historian should aspire to.

Luxenberg's mother, Beth, had long presented the story of herself as a only child. After her death, her family discovered a long and well-kept family secret - she had a sister named Annie. Annie had spent much of her life in institutions because of mental and physical disabilities. It was as though she never existed . . .  but Luxenberg discovers the truth that had been hidden for decades.

Luxenberg, an associate editor at The Washington Post, writes a personal story that is every bit as captivating as All the President's Men, written by Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Using his skills as a journalist, he takes his readers on his journey of discovery. The book is written so that the reader is learning each clue in the same order the author did. He follows each clue, each lead and his perseverance in conducting a "reasonably exhaustive search" is one we should all emulate.

I don't want to reveal any of the story, because it is one you must read yourself. But it is a story of secrets, skeletons in the closet and stories of the Holocaust that effected me on an emotional level as none had done before.

Learn more:


Steve Luxenberg's official site

Steve Luxenberg's Facebook page

Steve Luxenberg on Twitter

The Washington Post review of Annie's Ghosts

Annie's Ghosts: A Journey Into a Family Secret - purchase at Amazon.com

Disclaimer: The link to the book on Amazon.com is via my affiliate status with Amazon.com.

Genealogy or Private Investigation? Review of Searching For ... on OWN

Last week I mentioned a new show debuting on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) called Searching For . . .

The OWN web site describes the show as a documentary look at the work of a professional investigative genealogist, Pam Slaton. She works to help clients locate their long lost relatives. At first, I thought this sounded quite similar to Troy Dunn's The Locator on the WE channel. But the fact that the OWN publicity referred to Ms. Slaton as a genealogist intrigued me.

The program premiered yesterday and my original hunch was correct. The program is almost a carbon copy of The Locator, except that The Locator does it better. I would describe Ms. Slaton more as a private investigator, but I think a person has to be licensed before they can call themselves that. Perhaps that is the reason she is referred to as a genealogist instead.

The premise of both of these shows is that the investigator/genealogist/relative-hunter attempts to reunite people with long lost living relatives, such as birth parents for adoptees. The difference between yesterday's episode of Searching For . . . and The Locator was that Searching For . . . actually showed that the birth mother didn't want anything to do with the children who were looking for her. The Locator has a set formula and always ends with a happy reunion.

Neither show focuses on any details of the search. And for good reason - if the general public knew they could do this on their own, these investigators wouldn't have any clients. On both of these shows, the only research I see the investigators doing is using the "pay for public information" web sites. I've used them and I've found people easily, so I know it can be done. But it's a far cry from what a genealogist would consider research.

These shows are not Faces of America or Who Do You Think You Are? But I do think they serve a purpose for offering hope for those who have a hole in their life where a parent should have been. These shows do give those people hope and optimism that they might find their family member(s) some day.

Genealogy? Not hardly.

Review: The Women Who Came in the Mayflower

With the Thanksgiving holiday approaching a look back at the Plymouth colony and the Pilgrims seems in order. A free public domain book for the Kindle is The Women Who Came in the Mayflower by Annie Russell Marble.

This book was of immediate interest to me as I am descended from Mayflower passengers Stephen Hopkins and his second wife, Elizabeth (my ninth great grandmother), and from passenger Francis Cooke and his wife Hester Mahieu (she arrived on a later ship). I am not an expert on the Mayflower and its passengers, but acknowledge the fact that this is part of my heritage (along with several million other Americans living today). My connection to Hopkins and Cooke via the Landon family is documented in Joy Deal Lehmann's book Landon family history: Descendants of Samuel and Margaret Landon of Tioga County, Pennsylvania, and descendants of Daniel and Ann Landon of Greenwood, Nebraska, 1727-1987. 


The Women Who Came in the Mayflower is a quick read, just 56 pages in printed form. It tells little of the actual ocean voyage, but focuses more on the early years in Plymouth. In the first winter and spring, death and illness spread to the point there was only a handful of people to care for the sick and bury the dead. Of the 29 women who came in the Mayflower, 15 died during the first winter and spring. My ancestor, Elizabeth Hopkins, was described as one of the women of "strong physique and dauntless heart" and who "sustained to great old age."

Even with the hardships, Marble states that when the Mayflower was to return to England in April, people were offered free passage to return. No one accepted the offer.

Plymouth had a dwindling population and as more pilgrims arrived on subsequent ships, new families were formed out of necessity, with marriages occurring not long after the death of a spouse. Children had to be raised and the family unit was a necessity.

Marble debunks the image of the pilgrim women in the long gray gowns with the "dainty white collars and cuffs, with stiff caps and dark capes." In reality, she writes, they wore whatever was available. It was not until a few years later that nicer clothing became part of their wardrobe. And their clothing was awash with color, not just grey and black, she writes.

This little book is liberally footnoted. In the Kindle format, the footnotes appear right in the text, which is a bit distracting. It is far from being a comprehensive history of either the Mayflower women or of Plymouth. But it's interesting enough (it takes less than an hour to read). And the price is right: free.

Review: Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner - Part 2

It's easy to say that the Flip-Pal mobile scanner is going to meet my expectations for a versatile portable scanning device. Part 1 of this review demonstrated the scanning, color correction and stitching features.

You absolutely cannot beat this device based on its size and weight, which make it extremely portable. To get an idea of its size, below is my netbook computer and on the right is the Flip-Pal scanner.

Both devices could easily fit in the carrying case for my netbook, however, there may be times when I only need to use the scanner. So I stopped by Staples today and found a carrying case that is perfect for the scanner and has plenty of room for extra batteries. And from what I read in the user's manual, this scanner will definitely use plenty of batteries.

One of the selling points of the Flip-Pal scanner is that it can be used without a computer! No cords, no wires. Just grab and go. This makes the Flip-Pal a great device for genealogists. Take it to family reunions when people bring their family photos and albums. Take it on research trips to scan those photos that relatives don't want to turn loose. Use it in research facilities to scan documents or pages from a book (with proper copyright usage, of course!). If there's a wonderful document or photograph that is in the custody of one family member, having a digital scan is the best way to share it with other members of the family. And size no longer matters. Theoretically, you could scan and digitally stitch together a wall mural with this device if you wanted to.

All of the scanning is done right on the Flip-Pal. The scans are saved to a SD memory card. You will have to take the memory card to your computer to do any photo editing and stitching. The scanner comes with a SD to USB adaptor, so if your computer doesn't accept SD cards, it doesn't matter.

The software runs off the SD card and the product manual is also on the SD card. The manual is 18 pages in an Adobe pdf file. I seldom read a product manual - I just start clicking buttons. I did, however, check the manual to see how to remove the cover since I didn't want to break it and wanted to try the Flip part of the scanner. I did read about the batteries and like other digital devices, this is a battery hog. The unit requires four AA batteries (stock up on those today, too). The manual indicates that the scanner will yield about 150 scans on alkaline batteries, about 450 on photo lithium, and about 120 on rechargeable NiMH.

Scanning options are either 300 dpi or 600 dpi. The SD card that comes with the unit has about 1.5 GB available for storing images, which the manual indicates is about 750 scans at 300 dpi or 375 scans at 600 dpi. You can also use any standard SD or SDHC memory card, so if the 2 GB that comes with the unit is not enough, use your 4 GB or 8 GB cards. The toolbox software can be copied onto your own SD card.

If you purchase the Flip-Pal, plan on another $10 - $20 for a netbook sleeve or carrying case. The unit could probably be easily scratched or damaged if you just carry it around without any kind of protective cover.

Plan on stocking up on batteries or get that recharger out. If you're doing a lot of scanning, you'll be going through a lot.

Overall, the positive features of the Flip-Pal far outweigh any drawbacks. It's portable, it's lightweight and versatile. You can scan anywhere - on the kitchen table, at a family picnic, even sitting in bed while watching TV.

The Flip-Pal web site

Disclaimer: I purchased this product directly from the Flip-Pal web site. No compensation of any kind was received for this review.

Review: Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner - Miracles in Minutes - Part 1

I've eagerly been waiting for my Flip-Pal mobile scanner to arrive ever since I ordered it in August. This little gem arrived yesterday and I've been trying out some basic scanning as well as scanning an oversized document to see how the Autostitch software works.

I was scanning some 55 year old snapshots in less than five minutes after opening the box.

First of all, this scanner is fast. I'm used to my flatbed scanner warming up, grinding around taking its sweet time. This scanner was producing images for me in just a few seconds.

Apparently I was pissed off about something!

To the left is just a very ordinary photo of yours truly mugging for the camera. It's fairly typical of Brownie camera photographs processed at the drugstore in the mid-1950s. With some minor adjustments in the contrast, the scan actually looks sharper than the original.


The software that comes with the scanner allows you to make some adjustments with brightness and contrast. I found it to be quite satisfactory for these "quick and dirty" examples. If you want to do more photo restoration in Photoshop or other photo editing software, that would be fine. But for most scans, I think the Flip-Pal software is totally acceptable.


Below is a Before and After example of the type of adjustments you can make on your scanned images. On the left is my original scan and on the right is after I experimented with the brightness and contrast. The original image is one of those small Photo Booth pictures, circa 1940.

The next project was to see just how this works on oversize images. After all, isn't that the reason that a lot of we genealogists are interested in this product?

I went straight for my grandfather's childhood scrapbook of magazine photos of horses, cows and pigs. It's about 12" x 14" - maybe even larger. But it's too big to get a full page on my flatbed scanner. It took me a couple tries to get the auto-stitching software to work, but that was my own fault since I seldom read an instruction manual unless absolutely necessary. Since the software was not recognizing any stitchable regions, I realized that my scans had to overlap with one another. I made 11 scans of the page and here are four of them, just to demonstrate what the individual scanned images look like. Image size is reduced for the blog post.

Funny caption, anyone?

The Flip-Pal software is loaded on the 2GB SD memory card that comes installed on the scanner.

I clicked on the menu item "Stitch Scans", selected the scanned images to sew together and in only a few seconds, I had the following image on my computer screen:

I've left this image at its original size so you can click on it to see the full-size Hi-Res scan. I'll challenge anyone to find each individual scanned image. It absolutely matches perfectly. I even avoided cropping this image so you could seen the overage on the sides where I did the scanning. Well, what can I say? This is one of the two main reasons that I wanted to get this scanner.

Part 2 of this review will focus more on the technical aspects of the product and reason number 2 for my purchase - portability.

The Flip-Pal website

Part 2 of this review

Disclaimer: I purchased this product directly from the Flip-Pal web site. No compensation of any kind was received for this review.