When someone says, at a holiday dinner table, "Oh, those Lawrence cousins lose control all the time," or "the Davises always had more talent than luck," you can be sure there''s a lesson being passed along, from one generation to another. Who tells stories to whom and about what is never a random matter. Our family stories have a secret power: they play a unique role in shaping our identity, our sense of our place in the world. The give us values, inspirations, warnings, incentives. We need them. We use them. We keep them. They reverberate throughout our lives, affecting our choices in love, work, friendship, and lifestyle. Elizabeth Stone, whose grandparents came from Italy to Brooklyn, artfully weaves her own family stories among the stories of more than a hundred people of all backgrounds, ages, and regions - clarifying for us predictable types of family legends, providing ways to interpret our own stories and their roles in our lives. She examines stories of birth, death, work, mon
