CABS: Libby Copeland “The Lost Family: How DNA Testing is Upending Who We Are”

Click here to register!

The Lost Family delves into the many lives that have been irrevocably changed by home DNA tests – a technology that represents the end of family secrets. There are the adoptees who’ve used the test to find their birth parents; donor-conceived adults who suddenly discover they have more than fifty siblings; hundreds of thousands of Americans who discover their fathers aren’t biologically related to them, a phenomenon so common it is known as a “non-paternity event”; and individuals who are left to grapple with their conceptions of race and ethnicity when their true ancestral histories are discovered. Throughout these accounts, Copeland explores the impulse toward genetic essentialism and raises the question of how much our genes should get to tell us about who we are. With more than thirty million people having undergone home DNA, the answer to that question is more important than ever.  

No charge

You can purchase The Lost Family through online retailers (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound) 

Or in person at Barnes and Noble on 725, across from the Dayton Mall.

Libby Copeland is an award-winning journalist who writes about culture, science and human behavior. Her book, The Lost Family, published March 3, 2020, looks at the impact of home DNA testing on the American family (sign up here for updates and events). A staff reporter and editor for The Washington Post for over a decade, she now writes from New York for publications including The Atlantic, Slate, New York Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, The New York Times, The New Republic, Esquire.com, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Glamour and more. 

Partners:  Miami Valley Jewish Genealogy & History

Support for this event is provided in memory of Marcia Jaffe