Book Review: “The Gandelman Name in History” [Paperback] (The “Our Name In History” Series)
Sorry to have to be so blunt and I have never used the words in a review before, but may I say “Rip off?”
Yes, I know that the publishers of the Our Name In History disclose that these are short books, have some statistics and deal with immigration and old immgration records. But I — like I’m sure others have and will — bought this because the titled suggested it was a book ABOUT the Gandelman name in history. Nope. WRONG.
There was far less about the Gandelman name in history than about the incredible, fictional Gandelman brothers in Eric Wasserman’s world-class old Hollywood, Hollywood blacklist era must-read novel "Celluloid Strangers,"
which will be reviewed here within a week or so.
Rather, “The Gandelman Name in History” contains some statistics and facts but as a book it resembles the pre-election I used to write for newspapers to get ready for election night. I’d write the “evergreen” stuff that could stand alone, then plug in some specifics about the results on deadline.
“The Gandelman Name in History” — and other books with family names in them in this series — seems almost an unintentional “bait and switch” since you buy it figuring you’d read a lot about your family history and you get probaby a page or two (at MOST) of statistics about your family. The rest is “evergreen” about immigration at the time, America at the time.
This makes it easy to do a series: you can do The Schmidlap Name in History, The Jones Name in History, The Obama Name in History, The Jackson Name in History — and the main text is the same. All the publisher has to do is to do small run versions that have some statistics about the name on the cover in it — easily insertable.
It is a concept whose time has not come because you’re dealing with readers excited to learn something about THEIR family history.
Mind you, it IS indeed fascinating, worthwhile and a useful take off point to find out about your family.
But was this BOOK about “The Gandelman Name in History”?
I wouldn’t say so and I bet most readers wouldn’t say so but a p.r. person or a defense attorney representing the publisher in a class action lawsuit by readers who feel ripped off by the series might say so.
Why couldn’t I just buy the page or two of statistics about Gandelmans?
To be sure, I learned some very interesting things and will gift this to my sister in Colorado (for instance, I realized that my Dad and Uncle were among X number of Gandelmans who served during World War II, I learned where most Gandelmans live).
And the book was well done. But the book was also the only book I’ve bought on Amazon ever where I felt I had been snookered by a title that did not really reflect the contents.
You can buy one of these Our Name In History books for a relative.
Just don’t suggest to them that the book is actually about their specific family: it’s a book where some info about families are inserted into the text to sell the series.
The problem is that you can sell and then there’s word of mouth.
My word here is: “Buyer beware.”
I give this two and a half stars on a scale of five due to the title, which did not reflect the contents and was misleading. Well done general history. Shocking small info about Gandelmans.
GO HERE and see how disappointed others have been with this series when they bought these books with family name. BUYER BEWARE.
FOOTNOTE: This is the only book I bought on Amazon where I was going to demand a refund. But I lost and just found it so I’ll send it to my sister and ask her to pass it along to another Gandelman — or toss it.
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Know exactly what you are talking about, Joe.
Several years ago I bought a similar “book” named “The name] Family Heritage Book.”
What a disappointment — scam is probably a better word.
It was nothing but 40 or 50 pages of boiler plate stuff on how to research one’sfamily tree, followed by about six or seven pages of names and addresses (probably taken from phone books) of people with same last names.
You are right, “Buyer Beware.”
I bought a similar book, not expecting much… and my low expectations were met. As you said it did contain some interesting facts on a couple pages.
As far as this, “This makes it easy to do a series: you can do …. The Jones Name in History….”
I bet The Jones Name in History is a best seller! Maybe we should buy that since it sells so many copies. I’m always up for a best seller. (Just kidding of course.)
just commenting as an author: Dorian hit is right, there is a boilerplate for 1.4 inch deep “genealogy” books. The content is the same for each name, and the material added is scraped from Ancestry.com or the free genealogy websites, likey.
Typically such a ‘publishing’ outfit may also have several revenue-raisers… such as also advertising and publishing ‘your personalized horoscope,’ ‘who’s who in your profession,’ ‘beautiful poets of the world,’ and also ‘we personally review your manuscript.’ All the above contain boilerplate, abjectly redundant, non-specific info you could find in any magazine, any book, heck any free adult ed community classroom that runs for an hour of less.
Used to be you would sign up to ‘help’ a book on gandelman name be pub’d, depending on how many gandelman’s pub said they could find to buy in, would determine price of book. But, oh how wonderful it would be. Turns out there were never enough gandys to make a book price reasonable. So the gandelmans that could afford it, paid $80, $90 and more per book for just about what Joe wrote about above. That practice by ‘pubs’ was called bait and switch and because of hard legal issues, those kinds of pubs turned to other methods… as Joe describes above, which is likely a POD printing… ‘print on demand’ that is only printed one by one book when a person orders it at Amazon
Also, Amazon has attempted over the years to remove “the glowing reveiws’ of certain books, which are posted under the name of a seeming person, but which are actually from the pub company pr person or one-man-band owner of the company itself falsified/disguised as a consumer. Same in comments if an actual real reader/user has left a negative review, sometimes the pub will argue and say what ‘a wonderful book’ this is, but not reveal they are in fact the ‘mind’ behind that book.
If you feel a book is a scam and has been misrepresented, you should always write to Amazon (look at the very bottom of the page of your user account) and tell them so. You may not hear back from Amazon (one of their weak areas of customer service) but you can be assured that the man behind the curtain hears and often will do something about it.
Most authors, indie pub’d or/and pub’d by big six, are completely honest about what is in their books/ audios/ multimedia, etc. Those who pretend through implication that their book about YOUR family will be filled with info about YOUR family, ought not be left to set up others… who may be sincerely buying such a book as an honor gift for elders, or just to know in depth more about their own family.
Just a tip, the free genealogy websites (google just those words) and ancestry.com will give you more info about family all the way to 1910. 1920. 1930 and now 1940 census, plus mormon records which are amazingly complete and have nothing to do with people being mormon, to social security death index, plus birth, death, marriage records, plus military service records, plus immigration records (I saw the ship logs from all my refugee relatives passages, the towns they debarked from, the age they were, their pitiful possessions they had to claim, where exactly they were headed to by name and address… all written in beautiful scripts by the Captain’s office, and all wrinkled and ink splotched. I also saw in the census that many grew up in the 20s and 30s with many borders in the household and what their professions were : butcher, pipefitter, hopsmeister, blade sharpener. ) It’s all there for you, and only takes minutes to find such interesting things.
Thanks Joe and all for writing about this. The history of our families is sacred, scary, horrible, blessed, wondrous story, I think. Well worth knowing.
dr.e