Alex Haley

This poignant and powerful narrative tells the dramatic story of Kunta Kinte, snatched from freedom in Africa and brought by ship to America and slavery, and his descendants. Drawing on the oral traditions handed down in his family for generations, the author traces his origins back to the seventeen-year-old Kunta Kinte, who was abducted from his home in Gambia and transported as a slave to colonial America. In this account Haley provides an imaginative...

One of the most important books and television series ever to appear, Roots, galvanized the nation, and created an extraordinary political, racial, social and cultural dialogue that hadn’t been seen since the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The book sold over one million copies in the first year, and the miniseries was watched by an astonishing 130 million people. It also won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National...

Follows the Haley family from the post-Civil War era until the more contemporary but still turbulent time of the 1960s and '70s, when Alex himself begins his research into the discovery of his roots.

The remarkable history of Alex Haley's paternal side. Queen is the daughter of a slave and a plantation owner. During the turbulent decades of the antebellum South, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and beyond, she searches for a home in the two cultures and at times is shunned by both. Rejection and hate are no match for her unconquerable will.

Follows several generations in the lives of a slave family. The saga begins with Kunta Kinte, a West African youth captured by slave raiders and shipped to America in the 1700s. The family is depicted up until the Civil War, when Kunte Kinte's grandson gains his emancipation.