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b'Published Oct 20, 2011 Fire up your Kindle!\\xa0 In this episode I\'m going to introduce you to the author or a riveting book full of secrets, family history, and discoveries! \\xa0 GEM: Interview with Steve Luxenberg, author of Annie\'s Ghosts We\\u2019re going to mix things up a bit in this episode, and I want to start off with an email I received recently from Jay in New York who writes: \\xa0 \\u201cI have been catching up with all of your family history podcasts. Over the years I have collected a wealth of information on the family. Some good, some not-so-good, some out in-the-open, some hidden. \\xa0 How do you deal with revealing "forgotten" items about family members to other family members? I had an uncle who had a marriage at a very young age, and would like to have forgotten about it. My mother told me about it. I put it on the tree. While showing off the fruits of my labor to his family this "forgotten" marriage was revealed with not happy responses. \\xa0 The things we find in our tree may not always be "good", How does a person deal with that? and revealing it to others?\\u201d \\xa0 This is a great questions, and it\\u2019s sort of a cooincidence that this episode\\u2019s publish date coincides with Family history Month and Halloween because we\\u2019re going to explore ghosts and skeletons in the closet. \\xa0 But actually there\\u2019s nothing really spooky here, but rather these are things that can be found in many family.\\xa0 Secrets, small and large.\\xa0 Skeletons in the closet that are often closely guarded by others in our family. \\xa0 It\\u2019s a tricky business navigating your way through the shakier branches of the family tree, so I\\u2019ve invited a special guest to the show who has done an incredible job of climbing those branches in his own family. \\xa0 Steve Luxenberg is a Washington Post associate editor and award-winning author. In his 25 years at The Post, he has headed the newspaper\\u2019s investigative staff and its Sunday section of commentary and opinion.\\xa0 Steve is going to join me for the full episode to talk about investigating and dealing with family secrets as he did in\\xa0 his book Annie\\u2019s Ghost.\\xa0 It\\u2019s a riveting tale that kept me feverishly tapping the \\u201cNext Page\\u201d key on my kindle.\\xa0 \\xa0 is about a family secret that Steve stumbled upon in the late 1990s.\\xa0 His mother, who had always claimed to be an only child, had a sister, Annie.\\xa0 And while that was a big surprise all by itself, it was just the beginning of a series of secrets and revelations that Steve unearthed by tapping into his long career as an investigative journalist, and employing newly found genealogy techniques and strategies.\\xa0 In this interview we talk about being aware of what\\u2019s missing in records and stories, rather than just focusing on what is on the page.\\xa0 For those of you who are Premium Members this discussion is a great follow up to Premium Episode #77 where we talked about being more keenly aware during our research. Steve\\u2019s also going to share he thoughts on storytelling, which he truly masters in this book.\\xa0 \\xa0 And then we get into some of the genealogical techniques he used.\\xa0 How to avoid Tainting Memories in Interviews, and how to balance the give and take as well as win trust with the person you are interviewing.\\xa0 And speaking of trust Steve describes how he was able to be incredibly successful in obtaining sensitive documents and getting cooperation from various government agencies and other repositories. \\xa0 He\\u2019s also going to tell us about a little known legal maneuver that he made that really made the difference for him in obtaining some of the most closely held documents and how you can use it too! \\xa0 And finally he\\u2019ll share his personal feelings about what it was like to get a add a new member to his family, his long lost Aunt Annie. \\xa0 Resources Mentioned: Dillingham Commission\'s report on immigration, in digitized form, courtesy of the Stanford U. library. Vol. 4 describes immigration conditions in Europe (much of it focusing on Italy, if I remember correctly), and Vol 37 examines voyage conditions, focusing on steerage. \\xa0 \\xa0 \\xa0 Quotes from Annie\\u2019s Ghosts:\\xa0 \\u201cWhat I didn\\u2019t expect, as the week wore on, was that the family would expand to take in a new member.\\xa0 But that\\u2019s what happened.\\xa0 As people dipped in and out of the records, as the debates flew about what we knew and what we didn\\u2019t and whether we should be digging around in the past, Annie gradually became a part of the family consciousness.\\xa0 She was no longer just a name on a hospital record.\\xa0 She was no longer just a secret.\\u201d \\xa0 \\u201cI stopped thinking like a son and started thinking like a journalist.\\u201d \\xa0 \\u201cI offer to send her the letters; it\\u2019s an unexpected present for her, and I\\u2019m glad to be able to make the offer, because it allows me to give as well as take, something reporters can\\u2019t often do. It\\u2019s also a good way to win trust.\\u201d\\xa0 \\xa0 \\u201cI want to make sure that if she knows about Annie, she tells me before I tell her, so that I capture her spontaneious memory first.\\u201d \\xa0 Stay tune - Episode 121 wil feature part 2 of this interview.\\xa0 App users: check out the Behind the Scenes Steve and Lisa video!'