The Family Tree Guidebook to Europe: your essential guide to trace your genealogy in Europe is now available in our club library. This is the second edition, published October 2013 by Family Tree Books, edited by Allison Dolan and others. It’s on the “Foreign” shelf. Your dues allowed the library to acquire this for you.

The book is very well done. It contains fourteen chapters on countries or regions in Europe, together with four appendices and an index, totaling 272 pages. The amount of coverage for countries varies, with Ireland getting a chapter to itself but Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg all sharing one, for example.

No one is an expert on family history for the whole of Europe. Fortunately the editors of Family Tree Magazine draw on their stable of writers, and different chapters have different authors. These include David Fryxell (who’s spoken here many times and will visit again next month), Sharon DeBartolo Carmack, Thomas McEntee, and others.

While allowing multiple authors, the editors have done an excellent job of imposing a uniform structure. Each chapter has a map, timeline, and list of resources.  Authors are free to do what they like in the “Regional Guide” section. There are references to online resources as well as to books and repositories.

Reminder: we have an online catalog of our books at LibaryThing.