Here’s what the media and readers are saying about The Legacy Guide.
Digging Up the Past:
Local Authors Make Piecing Together Family History Easy
By Ana Maria Trujillo
The New Mexican
June 23, 2007
Ed and Ruth Weitsman, Santa Fe resident Carol Franco's late parents, wanted to take a vacation together to the mountains in 1934. They weren't yet married so Ruth's mother, Esther Kissen, said they couldn't go but she did have a solution in mind.
“My grandmother piped up and said, ‘Why don't you get married now,’ ” Franco wrote in an e-mail.
It was the Friday afternoon of June 29, 1934, when Franco's parents decided to get married on a whim. Ruth's father, Hyman Kissen, went to his temple, found a rabbi and paid him $10 before sundown to marry his daughter at the family home.
While it didn't make Ed's parents happy, it made everybody else happy.
Franco didn't know this story until she made a Mother's Day visit to St. Louis to see her aunt Ann, Ruth's twin sister, to dig for some stories about her mother. In fact, she learned a lot about her mother on the Mother's Day trip that she hadn't known. For instance, she didn't know her mother was a bookworm who did all the homework for herself and her twin sister ...
Copyright © 2007 The New Mexican, Inc.
Book Can Put a Life in Print:
Two Santa Feans Get the Idea After Thinking About Their Parents'
Lives
By Polly Summar, Journal Staff Writer
Journal Santa Fe
May 7, 2007
Carol Franco and Kent Lineback were eating dinner one night, talking about their parents.
"It dawned on us how little we knew about them as people," says Franco, who considered herself exceptionally close to her parents.
For Franco and Lineback, whose parents had died years before, it was too late to get answers to those questions. But they decided to make sure that didn't have to happen to others.
The result is their new book, The Legacy Guide: Capturing the Facts, Memories, and Meaning of Your Life (Tarcher/Penguin, $18.95).
Putting a book together was relatively easy for the married couple, who met while working at the Harvard Business School Press, where Franco was the Director. Lineback's specialty is collaboration. "I work with authors who have content, but don't know how to make a book out of it," he says.
And, in this case, the author he's collaborating with is you. You provide the content, by following the questions and exercises in the book. "And you don't have to be a writer to do this," said Franco ...
Copyright © 2007 Albuquerque Publishing Company.
Book Review
Publishers Weekly
January 15, 2007
Veteran authors Franco
and Lineback lead readers from beginning to end through the daunting process
of writing a memoir—for fun, loved ones or publishing. Examining
each stage of life, the authors outline the issues to consider and the
questions to ask oneself, as well as techniques for successful writing.
Using lively examples from a variety of literary sources, as well as some
of their personal stories, the authors clue readers in with insightful
ideas, down-to-earth stylistic advice and resources for further study.
Writing tips aren't groundbreaking ("always end a work session when
you are confident of what to say or do next") but reinforce practical,
time-tested methods, illuminating the smoothest trajectory through this
difficult, solitary task. The authors' focus on distilling meaning from
life events proves the most helpful part of the work ("what wisdom
did you gain from the choices that didn't quite work out?"), which
should be of immediate utility for anyone who enjoys journaling or scrapbooking
and wants to take their hobby in a more analytical (and potentially profitable)
direction.
Copyright © 2007 Reed Business Information,
a division of Reed Elsevier, Inc. All rights reserved.
Interview with Polly Lemire and Jim
Lehman, hosts of Family Legacy Advisors
October 3, 2007
Click
here to stream or download.
(wav audio file - 26.9MB)
Interview with
Carly Newfield, host of Goddess Radio
June 7, 2007
KSFR Radio
Interview with Diego Mulligan, host
of The Journey Home
May 2, 2007
KSFR Radio
Interview with Barry Beckham
February 16, 2007
Beckham
Publications Group, Inc.
Click
here to stream or download.
(mp3 audio file - 12.7MB)
From Amazon.com
"Great resource!"
Reviewer: Paula Stahel (Tampa, FL)
March 28, 2007
Life-writing books abound, but it's rare to find one as thought provoking and incisive as The Legacy Guide. Carol Franco and Kent Lineback have delivered an excellent resource. Best of all, it's not necessary to work it from first page to last—jump in anywhere and the memories begin to flow. As a professional personal historian, I try to stay abreast of what's available to recommend to clients, classes and in presentations. This now ranks in my top three, right along with Your Life as Story by Tristine Rainer and Keeping Family Memories Alive by Vera Rosenbluth.
"A perfect gift!"Reviewer: Carla Fantini (Dummerston, VT)
March 18, 2007
What a wonderful gift for everyone—your friends, your family, or yourself! You can read The Legacy Guide cover to cover and follow every exercise (highly recommended), or if time is an issue, you can flip through and browse the stories. I found myself doing both. I gave the book to my parents, and I can't wait to get started working on collecting our family's stories.
"The Legacy Guide"
Reviewer: Barbara A. Tabach (Henderson, NV)
March 13, 2007
The Legacy Guide takes the reader by the hand and gently leads them to excellent memory prompts for writing a personal history. I now recommend it to participants in the memoir writing workshops that I facilitate. Use this book yourself or share it with someone whose life story needs telling.
"A stimulating resource"
Reviewer: K. A. Kolbert (Santa Fe, NM)
February 17, 2007
The Legacy Guide helped me to reorganize my mother's memoirs that she left us. In addition, it was an invaluable resource to delving further into memories and family stories that I had never known or had forgotten. I wish that I had had this guide when my father were alive so that his stories could have been written down for my children.
When using the guide the authors stimulate your curiosity and family treasure trove of memories in so many ways. The variety of examples that they cite are also a great help when gathering material. I am grateful to have this new resource that I know will be invaluable to me as I organize my own life story.
"A perfect gift!"
Reviewer: M. Felcher (Cambridge, MA)
February 7, 2007
I bought this book for my mother, and she reported that as she started reading it she started to cry. It hit the spot! I also bought a copy for Aunt Belle, my 86-year-old aunt in Ft. Lauderdale. She reported that she loved reading it, but it seemed to be "too much work" to actually write down her memories. I told her to let the idea simmer for a while. Aunt Belle called back the next day to say that she had shared The Legacy Guide "with the canasta girls at the pool" and they started fighting over it. It seems that everyone had a story to tell, a memory that they had not thought about in years—maybe decades. The "canasta girls" talked Aunt Belle into working through the book and writing it all down. This is the perfect gift for anyone in your family whose stories you want to know.
"Access to your own unique life lessons"
Reviewer: C. Paul Dredge (Boston, MA)
February 5, 2007
I've read a good portion of The Legacy Guide and as a result have a better idea about how I can learn from my own life. I don't know that Franco and Lineback put it just this way, since they're talking about a "real" book that we could write, but I've come to think that in our memories each of us has a unique reference "book," like a life encyclopedia, from which we can learn deep truths about who we are and what we can contribute. Not too long ago I gave up recalling only comfortable memories and took on examining defeats, failures, and disappointments without wincing or ducking away. While we have much to learn from successes, there is also amazing insight available through recalling and analyzing our less successful moments. Happy memories or not so happy, our past is a textbook about life that is unique to us—it's as though a key reference volume sits on the shelf of the big library and we're the only ones who can read it. It's a useful book regardless of whether it gets written down, but there are some great additional benefits to putting key parts of it on paper—not the least of which is that others may then access parts of it and benefit from our experience.
The Legacy Guide is a guide to writing this sort of honest personal history—one's own, or the story of another person who is important in one's life. In their introduction, the authors talk about missed opportunities to understand others' lives—particularly parents, now gone—and subsequently provide stimulating summaries of seven life stages, engaging stories that exemplify good biographical writing, and wonderful, probing questions to ask the people we want to know and whose lives can teach us so much. That would particularly include ourselves.
Reading this book prompted me to look at a personal journal that I kept many years ago. The journal is indirect, mannered, and so subjective that it's hard to figure out what was happening. I'm left thinking that I was trying to impress either myself or those who might read it after I couldn't. Many years later, I'm not impressed. Much better to use the progression from facts to memories to meaning framework that The Legacy Guide suggests. This book facilitates an important, maybe vital, process. We can know ourselves, and others can know us more usefully, if we think through and discover the meaning of our life experiences.
"Good for writers and non-writers alike"
Reviewer: N. Nichols (Chicago, IL)
February 2, 2007
This book is an excellent resource for anyone who is trying to capture and preserve important moments and memories. The book is well organized, and it has many great exercises. It is perfect for writers and non-writers alike. A really great find.
"A memory jogger with depth and good
examples"
Reviewer: P. McNees (Bethesda, MD)
January 24, 2007
I teach a course in Life Stories and Legacy Writing at the Writer's Center in Bethesda, so I'm always looking for books I can recommend to my students. There are many "memory jogger" books of the type that ask things like "when was your first kiss" or "tell me about the first day of school." This one provides similar but better triggers for memories but also helps readers find a pattern in their lives, which I think will be helpful for people working on their own. During this session I've recommended this book and Tristine Rainer's book, Your Life as Story, for students who want to do more on their own. I'm glad someone is asking for "facts, memories, AND meaning," and with such good examples.
"The Legacy Guide"
Reviewer: Ellen Walton (location unknown)
January 22, 2007
An excellent book with easy-to-follow instructions on how to bring out the life stories of loved ones—including yourself. I used the method with my mother when she was in assisted living and had little to talk about. Together, we captured her life memories for myself and my family. She, in turn, used the questions at the dinner table with her friends to relive their life experiences. In her last days my mother wanted the caregivers to read and reread her stories as a way to say good-bye to life. The book provides a way to organize the memories of your life and the lives of people reaching the end of their allotted life span. I would highly recommend the book.
Other
Jan Andersen (location unknown)
August 4, 2007
Recently I purchased your book from the Writer's Digest Book Club. I have been a "fledgling writer" for many years and can only say this book is FANTASTIC! I just bought a green, three-ring binder (one of my favorite colors) and went to your site to see about downloading the forms. As I am "technologically challenged," I was truly amazed at just how easy it was to do. Now they are in my Microsoft Word file and ready for me to fill them in. I've started with the Childhood forms and am looking forward to using the prompts to tell my life story. At nearly 61, I have lots of stories and hope for many more. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU for creating a book that offers so much encouragement and practical help. This is something I've wanted to do for a long time. Now I have the help I needed to organize everything and put it down on paper. You two are terrific!!!
Susan T. Hessel (La Crosse, WI)
July 2, 2007
I am going to have my fourth session tonight of the Write Your Life class at the local technical college, and your book is a very, very big hit. It is so logical, too. Anyone can come up with questions to pull memories, but the concept of going from fact to memory to meaning is what really counts.
The class is very pleased with the book as well.
J. Campbell (British Columbia)
March 8, 2007
We live in a small rural community in northern BC which sadly has only a small secondhand book store in one section of a computer shop. So, whenever we travel, one of our pleasures is to browse through good bookstores to find new material on various subjects of interest. I happened to find your new book in a section on genealogy and family history and have been reading it whenever I get the chance since returning home. I particularly appreciate the many personal stories you have provided as inspiration and examples throughout the book. What a lot of work and meticulous gathering and organizing to write a book such as this one you have recently completed!
