One Hundred Years in Canada: The Rubinoff-Naftolin Family Tree, by Bill Gladstone, 2008. $40 (U.S. or Canada) Available at http://rubnaft.com/. http://www.billgladstone.ca
Some books invite exploration from the minute you first set eyes on them. One Hundred Years in Canada is such a book. From the beautiful color mosaic cover to the innumerable photographs, documents, and charts that clarify and enliven the prose, the author and professional editor/writer Bill Gladstone demonstrates that he also has mastered the art of graphic design.
As he explains in his discussion of how he produced the book (see “Publish or Perish: How I Got the Rubinoff-Naftolin Family Saga into Print” this issue—Ed.), Gladstone did all the work himself. The fruit of many years searching and additional years mastering a high-end software program, this books illustrates many lessons for Jewish genealogists. One is that economical print-on-demand technology can produce an excellent, high-quality, affordable product. Another is that the fruit of our genealogical labors need not include a research tour de force.
Gladstone has done everything available to the contemporary genealogist—–all the research, even trips to the Old Country shtetls, but his search (like most of ours) only took him back to the early 19th century, to a set of great-great-great-grandparents about whom he knew almost nothing—except the names of five of their children. This book follows the lives of these five siblings and their descendants, artfully interweaving well-researched, well-written details of the context in which they lived.
This family history, like those of many AVOTAYNU readers, is essentially an immigration story, focusing primarily on Jewish immigrant life in Toronto, Canada, in the early to-mid-20th century. Gladstone introduces his book by noting:
Now that most of the immigrant generation is gone, is our history lost beyond retrieval? Certainly not. Today, as never before, it is possible to follow the “paper trail” of their historic journey to reveal details of their existence in the Old Country of more than a century ago.
He adds, “The journey our ancestors took from the old world to the new is a central focus of the book. Who left? when? and why?” are key questions the narrative attempts to answer.
For Gladstone, this book represents the culmination of his family history research. Others who similarly want to cap their efforts with a book will gain many valuable insights by consulting this one. Other people’s family histories generally do not make particularly interesting reading, but this one has much to offer—not so much because its stories are particularly unusual, but because of the excellent manner in which the author has presented his story. Especially instructive are the many instances in which Gladstone guides the reader by the liberal, eminently readable placement of miniature family trees throughout the prose. Also worth noting are the creative ways in which he indicates such common Jewish situations as cousin marriages. This book is one of the best family histories I have ever seen.
Sallyann Amdur Sack, Editor
