The Lost Family
How DNA Testing Is Upending Who We Are
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Narrated by:
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Cindy Kay
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By:
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Libby Copeland
About this listen
A deeply reported look at the rise of home genetic testing and the seismic shock it has had on individual lives
You swab your cheek or spit into a vial, then send it away to a lab somewhere. Weeks later you get a report that might tell you where your ancestors came from or if you carry certain genetic risks. Or the report could reveal a long-buried family secret and upend your entire sense of identity. Soon a lark becomes an obsession, an incessant desire to find answers to questions at the core of your being, like "Who am I?" and "Where did I come from?" Welcome to the age of home genetic testing.
In The Lost Family, journalist Libby Copeland investigates what happens when we embark on a vast social experiment with little understanding of the ramifications. Copeland explores the culture of genealogy buffs, the science of DNA, and the business of companies like Ancestry and 23andMe, all while tracing the story of one woman, her unusual results, and a relentless methodical drive for answers that becomes a thoroughly modern genetic detective story.
The Lost Family delves into the many lives that have been irrevocably changed by home DNA tests - a technology that represents the end of family secrets. There are the adoptees who've used the tests to find their birth parents; donor-conceived adults who suddenly discover they have more than 50 siblings; hundreds of thousands of Americans who discover their fathers aren't biologically related to them, a phenomenon so common it is known as a "non-paternity event", and individuals who are left to grapple with their conceptions of race and ethnicity when their true ancestral histories are discovered. Throughout these accounts, Copeland explores the impulse toward genetic essentialism and raises the question of how much our genes should get to tell us about who we are. With more than 30 million people having undergone home DNA testing, the answer to that question is more important than ever.
Gripping and masterfully told, The Lost Family is a spectacular book on a big, timely subject.
©2020 Libby Copeland. Published in 2020 by Abrams Press, an imprint of ABRAMS, Inc. All rights reserved (P)2020 Blackstone PublishingListeners also enjoyed...
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This is the only book I never finished
- By Rob on 06-25-12
By: Jeffrey Kluger
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The Inheritance
- A Family on the Front Lines of the Battle Against Alzheimer's Disease
- By: Niki Kapsambelis
- Narrated by: Callie Beaulieu
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Every 69 seconds, someone is diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Of the top 10 killers, it is the only disease for which there is no cure or treatment. For most people, there is nothing that they can do to fight back. But one family is doing all they can. The DeMoe family has the most devastating form of the disease that there is: early onset Alzheimer's, an inherited genetic mutation that causes the disease in 100 percent of cases, and has a 50 percent chance of being passed onto the next generation.
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A Cover-to-Cover Slug in the Gut, but Inspiring
- By Gillian on 04-16-17
By: Niki Kapsambelis
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Reclamation
- Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson, and a Descendant's Search for Her Family's Lasting Legacy
- By: Gayle Jessup White
- Narrated by: Karen Chilton
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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A Black descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings’ family explores America’s racial reckoning through the prism of her ancestors - both the enslaver and the enslaved.
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Slow start, eventually a worthwhile story
- By ChocolateDweller on 12-17-21
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One and Only
- The Freedom of Having an Only Child, and the Joy of Being One
- By: Lauren Sandler
- Narrated by: Lauren Sandler
- Length: 6 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Journalist Lauren Sandler is an only child and the mother of one. After investigating what only children are really like and whether stopping at one child is an answer to reconciling motherhood and modernity, she learned a lot about herself - and a lot about our culture's assumptions. In this heartfelt work, Sandler legitimizes a discussion about the larger societal costs of having more than one.
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Data Driven
- By Meghan B on 01-11-22
By: Lauren Sandler
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Wandering in Strange Lands
- A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots
- By: Morgan Jerkins
- Narrated by: Morgan Jerkins
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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From the acclaimed cultural critic and New York Times best-selling author of This Will Be My Undoing - a writer whom Roxane Gay has hailed as “a force to be reckoned with” - comes this powerful story of her journey to understand her Northern and Southern roots, the Great Migration, and the displacement of black people across America.
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Not Just Black History -- It's All Of Our History
- By Ardee on 08-22-20
By: Morgan Jerkins
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One Child
- The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment
- By: Mei Fong
- Narrated by: Janet Song
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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When Communist Party leaders adopted the one-child policy in 1980, they hoped curbing birthrates would help lift China's poorest and increase the country's global stature. But at what cost? Now, as China closes the book on the policy after more than three decades, it faces a population grown too old and too male, with a vastly diminished supply of young workers. Mei Fong has spent years documenting the policy's repercussions on every sector of Chinese society.
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Best Book Club Discussion Ever!!
- By Rachael W. Schettenhelm on 05-01-17
By: Mei Fong
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Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings
- An American Controversy
- By: Annette Gordon-Reed
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 12 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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When Annette Gordon-Reed's groundbreaking study was first published, rumors of Thomas Jefferson's sexual involvement with his slave Sally Hemings had circulated for two centuries. Among all aspects of Jefferson's renowned life, it was perhaps the most hotly contested topic. Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings intensified this debate by identifying glaring inconsistencies in many noted scholars' evaluations of the existing evidence. In this study, Gordon-Reed assembles a fascinating and convincing argument that the evidence for the affair has been denied a fair hearing.
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Just people
- By Ben on 06-28-20
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Life Before Life
- Children's Memories of Previous Lives
- By: Jim B. Tucker MD, Ian Stevenson - foreword MD
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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This popular examination of research into children's reports of past-life memories describes a collection of 2,500 cases at the University of Virginia that investigators have carefully studied since Dr. Ian Stevenson began the work more than 40 years ago. The children usually begin talking about a past life at the age of two or three and may talk about a previous family or the way they died in a previous life. Their statements have often been found to be accurate for one particular deceased individual, and some children have recognized members of the previous family.
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Heavy on the scientific process
- By Karilyn Schaffer on 02-19-19
By: Jim B. Tucker MD, and others
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Viral Justice
- How We Grow the World We Want
- By: Ruha Benjamin
- Narrated by: Ruha Benjamin
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Long before the pandemic, Ruha Benjamin was doing groundbreaking research on race, technology, and justice, focusing on big, structural changes. But the twin plagues of COVID-19 and anti-Black police violence inspired her to rethink the importance of small, individual actions. Part memoir, part manifesto, Viral Justice is a sweeping and deeply personal exploration of how we can transform society through the choices we make every day.
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Fantastic book!
- By Avie Kearney on 05-21-23
By: Ruha Benjamin
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Living the Secular Life
- New Answers to Old Questions
- By: Phil Zuckerman
- Narrated by: Andy Paris
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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A guidebook for living a life without religion, combining sociological insight and personal inspiration. Over the last 25 years, "no religion" has become the fastest growing religion in the United States. Around the world, hundreds of millions of people have turned away from the traditional faiths of the past and embraced a secular - or nonreligious - life, generating societies vastly less religious than at any other time in human history.
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Anecdotal based approach for understanding
- By Gary on 12-30-14
By: Phil Zuckerman
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White like Her
- By: Gail Lukasik PhD, Kenyatta D. Berry - foreword
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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In the historical context of the Jim Crow South, Gail explores her mother's decision to pass, how she hid her secret even from her own husband, and the price she paid for choosing whiteness. Haunted by her mother's fear and shame, Gail embarks on a quest to uncover her mother's racial lineage, tracing her family back to 18th-century colonial Louisiana. In coming to terms with her decision to publicly out her mother, Gail changed how she looks at race and heritage.
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Disappointed
- By Yoli on 06-06-18
By: Gail Lukasik PhD, and others
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Galileo's Middle Finger
- Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science
- By: Alice Dreger
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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A powerful defense of intellectual freedom told through the ordeals of contemporary scientists attacked for exploring controversial ideas, by a noted science historian and medical activist.
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Engrossing but...
- By Lilly F. on 12-30-20
By: Alice Dreger
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I Want You to Know We're Still Here
- A Post-Holocaust Memoir
- By: Esther Safran Foer
- Narrated by: Ellen Archer, Esther Safran Foer
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Esther Safran Foer grew up in a home where the past was too terrible to speak of. The child of parents who were each the sole survivors of their respective families, for Esther the Holocaust loomed in the backdrop of daily life, felt but never discussed. The result was a childhood marked by painful silences and continued tragedy. Even as she built a successful career, married, and raised three children, Esther always felt herself searching.
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Interesting but…
- By mk on 08-23-21
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A Mind Spread Out on the Ground
- By: Alicia Elliott
- Narrated by: Kyla Garcia
- Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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The Mohawk phrase for depression can be roughly translated as a mind spread out on the ground. In this urgent, visceral work, Alicia Elliott explores how apt a description that is for the ongoing effects of the personal, intergenerational, and colonial traumas experienced by her so many Native people. Elliott's deeply personal writing details a life spent between Indigenous and White communities - a divide reflected in her own family - and engages with such wide-ranging topics as race, parenthood, love, art, mental illness, poverty, sexual assault, gentrification, and representation.
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Well written, heartfelt, revealing
- By KWK on 07-15-24
By: Alicia Elliott
What listeners say about The Lost Family
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Melisa
- 09-01-21
Wonderful Insight
I’m a recent NPE and I loved hearing other stories about people whose lives were changed from DNA testing.
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- Kelly A.
- 10-05-21
Interesting and timely read!
Really enjoyed this book! Libby Copeland did a nice job in explaining genetics and genealogy in a way that was simple, but also highlighted the nuances well. Really interesting read for anyone considering DNA testing.
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- Dorothy K. Lehman
- 03-21-21
Catnip to genealogists
Well written, deeply engaging survey of the advances in genetics, DNA and the companies that make it easy for us to build our family trees. And if that is not intriguing enough, there is a family mystery woven through the book. Great read.
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- Tom Kreykes
- 08-04-21
Wonderfully written!
Libby did a wonderful job of keeping the reader interested. She wove together detailed scientific information, revealing stories, and psychological issues that arise when DTC testing doesn’t go as planned.
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- Brower’s Burgers
- 02-22-22
Fine
A lot more scientific information than I was expecting. The main story is split up so it was a little hard to follow listening to it, figuring out who's who. Even some of the smaller stories were hard to keep names straight. The narration was fine. Overall it was fine, I only chose it as a book to read with my mother who had her own DNA mystery.
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- Nancy
- 03-03-21
Interesting and enlightening
My initial, gut response to the ads for "Give Us Your DNA, and We'll Give You Your Heritage. It'll Be Fun!", was "No, No Thank You". I didnt have to think through all my objections to know it was just too intrusive. Reading this book just confirmed my instinct.
Let me say that I enjoy the study of ancestry and I am not worried about any big surprises, certainly not in my immediate family. I'm also not a conspiracy theorist, and I'm not anti government. But I do fugure my DNA, along with plenty of other info is no doubt already out there and accessible to the government or anyone else who really wants it. All the same, why hand it over on a silver platter?
All these sites gathering our DNA for fun at profit set off alarms in the back of my history loving head, and this book just confirmed many of the reasons why.
One thing I hadn't really thought of was that you arent just sharing your own unique info, but that of everyone related to you, even distant relatives, many you know nothing about. You might be intruding on their priivacy.
I can understand why others, especially those looking for answers, might feel differently. To them I say, read this book first, or just think through some of the possible consequences, then. if it still seems important to you, go for it.
But for me, it seems like privacy is going the way of good manners and respect for the social contract. I personally dont want to be a part of rushing them out the door.
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1 person found this helpful
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- D.Ryan
- 01-13-22
You may not be who you thought you were!
A great read and lots of information. Made me feel better at not being “more Italian”
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- Gayle Old-Smith
- 04-30-21
5 stars in every way
Excellent and informative book. Excellent narration.
I will listen again.
The conclusion of the book provides a resource for updates to findings.
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- Booreiss
- 08-12-22
The perfect title
As someone who got unexpected results when just taking the test to find out more about my ancestry, Copeland explains so well the landmines that can explode when just taking the test for fun. I no longer freely encourage people to take a test without explaining the risks. The book is a great overview of genetics, how commercial tests came about, what can be " found out" and how to find out more with anecdotes throughput.
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- steve
- 07-14-22
Excellent book
The narration is well done
The author does an excellent job describing the DNA process yet makes the info weave perfectly into the personal stories.
Well worth your time
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1 person found this helpful