Books

	Albion's Seed : Four British Folkways in America by David Hackett Fischer Albion's Seed describes the four main migrations from Great Britain to the American colonies. It is an invaluable insight into the culture and folkways of our ancestors from the earliest settlements to later colonial times. This is a great armchair history book for the genealogist with early American roots.
	The Other California : The Great Central Valley in Life and Letters (Western Literature Series) by Gerald W. Haslam My grandfather Piper arrived in Tulare county, California from Missouri in the late 1800s. He worked and speculated in the oilfields Tulare living in Oildale. My grandfather worked the fields and my father as a small child was there. This books contains 19 essays on the landscape, literature, and life in the agricultural heartland that is the Central Valley of California. Anybody born and raised in the Central Valley of California will identify with these essays and recognize home.
	The Birth of France : Warriors, Bishops, and Long-Haired Kings by Katharine Scherman (This item is out of print, but Amazon will try to find a used copy for you) Do you have a line back to European royalty? I even have a dubious one. Once you get back to Charlemagne you connect back to the long-hair kings of the Franks. Katherine Scherman turns the complex post Roman history of Gaul to the birth of France into a wonderfully spun tale. On occasion she pulls you out of the dark ages to the present to tell you from a tourist viewpoint of the ruins left by the Franks. I'm sorry, but in reading the book I can't help but think of the Bugs Bunny cartoon where Elmer Fudd is singing "Kill the Wabbit!" to some Teutonic opera involving tales of Frankish intrigue and murder.