The Genealogical Sublime

Since the early 2000s, genealogy has become a lucrative business, an accelerating online industry, a massive data mining project, and fodder for reality television. But the fact remains that our contemporary fascination with family history cannot be understood independently of the powerful technological tools that aid and abet in the search for traces of blood, belonging, and difference.

In The Genealogical Sublime, Julia Creet traces the histories of the largest, longest-running, most lucra...