Faces of America: How 12 Extraordinary People Discovered their Pasts - Hardcover

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is the director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research and holder of the distinguished title of Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University. He is the author of twelve books, including several award-winning works of literary criticism as well as the memoir Colored People; The Future of the Race, co-authored with Cornel West; Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man; and Tradition and the Black Atlantic. Gates has hosted ten PBS television specials, including Looking for Lincoln and the two part series, African American Lives, upon which his book In Search of Our Roots (2009) was based. He is winner of the 2009 Ralph Lowell Award for Outstanding Contributions to Public Television and the 2010 NAACP Image Award for Non-Fiction.

“There are surprises—[Gates] finds a common ancestor between Queen Noor of Jordan and African-American academic Elizabeth Alexander; both are 37th great-granddaughters of Charlemagne—and in getting such subjects as Mike Nichols to open up about their pasts, he finds how powerfully the past informs the present. Gates offers a book stuffed with epiphanies that will spark curiosity among readers about their own ancestry as well as their possible connections to each other.”
-Publishers Weekly

“Faces of America adds compelling evidence that the American story of race is a far more complicated affair than the conventional wisdom of the past would have us believe. Science, history, and genealogy come together in this accessible, intelligent, and elegant presentation. This is a must read for all who are interested in reconstructing the story of the American people.”
-Annette Gordon-Reed,2009 Pulitzer Prize winner and 2008 National Book Award winner for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

“In Faces of America, Henry Louis Gates Jr. has found a middle path: He applies the most rigorous genealogical and genetic tools to the family histories of 12 ethnically distinct Americans, and in doing so touches on the history of not only these individuals but on the human race itself...Gates’s breezy, intimate style and obvious affection for his subjects results in a book that is the bionic version of that old fourth-grade family tree assignment, thanks to the support of a world-class Rolodex and Harvard researchers and geneticists. It’s fun.”
-The Boston Globe

“Henry Louis Gates, Jr., takes us on a spellbinding journey into the lives of some of America’s favorite celebrities by excavating historical archives and using the latest advances in genealogy and genetics. A rich tapestry of the nation’s people, Gates’s Faces of America uncovers the common thread that holds us together while highlighting the differences that make us unique from each other and from one generation to the next.”
-Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham,Victor S. Thomas Professor of History and of African and African American Studies, Harvard University