Our Name in History

Searching today on Amazon for books on Bayes Theorem I found "The Bayes Name in History" author and publisher Ancestry.com.

The blurb mentioned that the book is "part of the Our Name in History series, a collection of fascinating facts and statistics, alongside short historical commentary, created to tell the story of previous generations who have shared this name. The information in this book is a compendium of research and data pulled from census records, military records, ships' logs, immigrant and port records, as well as other reputable sources."

I was a bit surprised that Ancestry.com would produce this, then noticed a publication date of 2007, before the company exited the publishing business.

Investigating further revealed a blog post by Dick Eastman from 2006 which gave the series a kind review. "For the non-genealogist, this is an easy way to learn a little bit with no effort".  "I believe that anyone who has been seriously looking for their ancestors for more than a few weeks will not find "Our Name in History" to be worth the price of $49.95 plus shipping."

What's changed since 2006 is the price is now down to $19.95 for a paperback edition, and $6.39 for the Kindle version. An example of the benefit (?) of print on demand and the low cost of eBooks.