Genre: Documentary
Premise: A poet learns she is distantly related to a king of England. A famous actress finds that one of her ancestors participated in the founding of the United States. Using the most up-to-date technology and tools of genealogy and genetics, Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. unravels that tapestry of America to trace the threads of history of several well-known Americans. Cellist Yo-Yo Ma is stunned to hear details of an ancestor's birth in 1435. Actress Eva Longoria is entranced by the notation of her ancestor's appointment to a post in Mexico in 1603, years before the sailing of the Mayflower. Gates also examines the ancestry of Kristi Yamaguchi, Meryl Streep, Mario Batali and Stephen Colbert, among others.
