Family Tree Magazine contributing editor Maureen A. Taylor, aka the Photo Detective, provides an exciting view of history in The Last Muster: Images of the Revolutionary War Generation (Kent State University Press). Its 70 images, genealogical research and contributions from David Allen Lambert of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, give faces to everyday founding fathers and mothers.

In Catina's Haircut: A Novel in Stories, (University of Wisconsin Press), Paola Corso links four generations of a southern Italian peasant family in Italy and America. The women's stories begin in a Calabrian hill town and reveal the post-unification poverty that forced many Italians to emigrate.

Although secular opportunities motivated many, your ancestors could have migrated West for religious reasons. S. Scott Rohrer examines two religious migrations in Wandering Souls: Protestant Migrations in America, 1630-1865 (University of North Carolina Press). Most common were groups seeking religious and social fulfillment; others wanted to escape persecution.