Tips and Tricks is a compilation of Schober’s most popular blog posts and articles on deciphering German documents, and the idea is to provide the reader with the tools they’ll need “to try deciphering [German documents] on [their] own, working out the puzzle of the individual letters and feeling the sense of excitement and pride that comes with being able to read a previously illegible word.” The book is divided into eleven easy-to-read-and-navigate chapters that I can see myself referencing again and again with each new German record that I come across in my search. There’s a chapter on deciphering look-alike letters in German handwriting; one on identifying typical spelling mistakes; and another on common ancestral occupations in their written form.

Have you found a German marriage certificate, but don’t know how to interpret its format? There’s a chapter for that. Need to understand the abbreviations you’re seeing? Found a word that isn’t in the dictionary? Or worse, found a Latin word hidden among the German text? There are chapters for that, too. My favorite, though, is chapter eleven, “Practice Makes Perfect;” Schober provides a list of “real-life” examples of handwritten German words and phrases for the reader to practice deciphering, and she offers an answer key at the end. Tips and Tricks is the perfect resource for the family historian who is just starting out with German records–it’s brief and concise and to-the-point–as well as the long-time genealogist who needs to brush up on their skills.