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Alex Haley

Roots: The Saga of an American Family Paperback – May 3, 2016

by Alex Haley (Author)

4.8 3,133 ratings

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Based off of the bestselling author's family history, this novel tells the story of Kunta Kinte, who is sold into slavery in the United States where he and his descendants live through major historic events.

When Roots was first published forty years ago, the book electrified the nation: it received a Pulitzer Prize and was a #1 New York Times bestseller for 22 weeks. The celebrated miniseries that followed a year later was a coast-to-coast event-over 130 million Americans watched some or all of the broadcast. In the four decades since then, the story of the young African slave Kunta Kinte and his descendants has lost none of its power to enthrall and provoke.

Now, Roots once again bursts onto the national scene, and at a time when the race conversation has never been more charged. It is a book for the legions of earlier readers to revisit and for a new generation to discover.

To quote from the introduction by Michael Eric Dyson: "Alex Haley's Roots is unquestionably one of the nation's seminal texts. It affected events far beyond its pages and was a literary North Star.... Each generation must make up its own mind about how it will navigate the treacherous waters of our nation's racial sin. And each generation must overcome our social ills through greater knowledge and decisive action. Roots is a stirring reminder that we can achieve these goals only if we look history squarely in the face."

The star- studded cast in this new event series includes Academy Award-winners Forest Whitaker and Anna Paquin, Laurence Fishburne, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Derek Luke, Grammy Award-winner Tip "T.I." Harris, and Mekhi Phifer. Questlove of The Roots is the executive music producer for the miniseries's stirring soundtrack.

Print length

912 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Da Capo Press
Publication date

May 3, 2016
Dimensions

8.2 x 5.5 x 2.1 inches
ISBN-10

0274800012
ISBN-13

978-0306824852
Lexile measure

1330L
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for Roots

"The book is an act of love, and it is this which makes it haunting."—New York Times

"A gripping mixture of urban confessional and political manifesto, it not only inspired a generation of black activists, but drove home the bitter realities of racism to a mainstream white liberal audience."—Observer

"Groundbreaking"—The Associated Press

"A Pulitzer Prize-winning story about the family ancestry of author Alex Haley…[and] a symbolic chronicle of the odyssey of African Americans from the continent of Africa to a land not of their choosing."—Washington Post

Philadelphia Tribune, 6/7/16
“[A] landmark book.”—Marian Wright Edelman

About the Author

Alex Haley (1921-1992) was a bestselling and award-winning writer whose works, including Roots and The Autobiography of Malcolm X, centered on the struggles of African Americans.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 030682485X
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Da Capo Press; Media tie-in edition (May 3, 2016)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 912 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0274800012
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0306824852
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1330L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.01 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.2 x 5.5 x 2.1 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #48,326 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #105 in Black & African American History (Books)
- #260 in Black & African American Biographies
- #1,811 in Memoirs (Books)

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4.8 3,133 ratings

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M. Aldana

Saw the miniseries as a kid. Book is good.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 8, 2023

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Likeable character build up, emotional live situations, but the ending trails and becomes even repetitive. Shortening the end would've left a much more impactful impression.

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Customer

should have been required reading growing up

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 10, 2023

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Amazing story about a sad history. It really should have been required reading like Grapes of Wrath

4-4.5 stars - kinda dwindled towards last 1/3

One person found this helpful

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Chem

Great book - but remember, its fiction

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 31, 2007

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Haley wrote a great book. Ought to be considered an American classic if its not already.
The timeline moves forward more rapidly after the Kunta Kinte part, which takes up at leas the first one-third of the book. In other words theres a lot of detail about him and his life, then it speeds up during grandson George's lifetime until it is glossing over the day-to-day details of George's descendants' lives. I suppose thats inevitable - Haley could not have written the same level of detail about all the grandchildren, great-grandchildren and the numerous offspring. Haley handled this very well.
There are also several "cutoff points" where the chapter changes and the focus moves completely to the next generation. In other words, when Kizzy is taken away, we no longer hear of Kunta & Bell - the story becomes completely about Kizzy. Then when she gets old, the story refocuses to George's family. We never learn the fate of Kunta & Bell or exactly how Kizzy dies. This literary technique has a melancholy effect, but also leaves some things to the readers imagination. I like it for that.

There are some details, for example in dates of things happening versus the age of characters. But if you avoid looking for age/date contradictions, they won't detract from enjoying the book. Other little details include mentioning use of barbed wire on a plantation (invented by a Frenchman in 1865 and didn't enter widespread production until 1874-ish), George bathing in a galvanized tub before his marriage circa 1840(galvanization entered widespread use in the late 1800s), and the "old Gardener" Josephus describing Indian's teepees to young Kunta (the Eastern Woodlands tribes built wigwam huts - they did not use the conical teepees he describes of the Plains Indians, who were barely known to the colonists at that time, circa 1790)...All these are minor details, of course :)......

Please bear in mind this is a work of FICTION. Haley himself intended it that way; however the book has been spotted on library shelves in Biography or Geneaology sections. That is incorrect - the details of what happened 200 yrs prior could in no way be researched reliably enough for this work to be non-fiction or a true biography.
There have also been scholarly challenges to Haley's claims that he found his ancestral village in The Gambia, and to his genealogical research (its now known that Kunta/Toby arrived earlier than 1767 or was in fact born in America, and died years before Kizzy's birth. Also that the slave with the injured or deformed foot was a man called "Hopping George", possibly unrelated to the Haley line. And no evidence his foot was cut off as a runaway).
So Haley's claim to descendancy form Kunta/Toby is speculative. But this book will capture your imagination.
(For some details about criticism of the book, see Wikipedia. Just don't let that stop you from understanding the purpose of this fine work).

13 people found this helpful

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AdrienneL

paperback was all yellow pages and very small print, I can't read it.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 1, 2023

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I couldnt read it, the pages are all yellow and print very tiny. I'd never sell a book in this condition

One person found this helpful

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Gail Johnson

I'm so glad I ordered the paperback version.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 26, 2020

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Knowing that any book version verses the movie is always better and has more details, "Roots" by Alex Haley is no different. I have the mini series on DVD which I'm glad I viewed before reading the book. The movie is a water down version to the book. The book is more like a review of slavery during the Civil War with much more details that were not in the movie. Remember the movie was edited for television.
Before purchasing the book, I wanted to know a little bit more about Alex Haley and one of the things that caught my attention was that he was x-military U.S. Coast Guard. Also, I wanted to know why it took him 12 years to the research for the book. I learned not only was he researching his ancestors but he was learning about their surrounding day to day life (culture). With that said "Roots" is more like a history book that covers the life and culture of Africa during the 1700's, how husbands were able to speak a language that their wives were not allowed to speak or learn, or how there were many antislavery societies such as the Christians, Methodist and Quakers just to name a few. There is so much more in the book I found refreshing to learn of how our country was develop during the cotton gin age. There is so much more to the Civil War or the other wars within the United States that was or is not mentioned in our mainstream history books. A must read for all students sixth grade and up.

13 people found this helpful

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james kelly

Important part of American history

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 26, 2023

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This would be a great book for Florida Governor Ron Desantis to read.

12 people found this helpful

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olugboyega

It arrived in good time.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 23, 2022

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Was for personal use.

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Amazon Customer

Staggering revelations

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 9, 2018

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The title of this book says “The Saga of an AMERICAN family.” Every single American, unless Native American, has roots from somewhere else.
As we have learned in these pages, the roots of the Kinte family are African. I am also from an American family - with German roots. My husband is from an American family - with African roots.

I am not directly or personally responsible for any atrocities related to slavery, nor do I personally know anyone who has been the victim of slavery directly. Maybe because of that, I have had an impersonal attitude toward slavery and if I am being honest, I think I resented being lumped together with those of my race that were responsible for it.

I will confess that, although I had heard of Roots and had been aware of slavery’s impact on America, I had not given either the respect they are due until I married my African-American husband. In an effort to understand his heritage, I chose to read this haunting narrative and it will surely haunt me for the rest of my life! The images and emotions portrayed in these pages have changed me.

Having read Roots, I now have a deep conviction of the wrongs that have been committed. It is my prayer that I and those I have influence over will make every effort to do better for all generations to follow. May that be my legacy to my children and grandchildren and beyond, to in some small way, right a wrong and teach a better way.

Every American, regardless of their race, has roots from somewhere else. Every American, regardless of their roots, has a heart, a soul, a dream, a need. Every American loves, hopes, laughs, cries, hurts and suffers in their own way. May God help us all to see the things we have in common and use those things to unite us and build a future where cruelty no longer exists. Yes, that would be a legacy worth leaving!

—— Peggy Lee, Houston, TX

89 people found this helpful

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Rob05

Poorly transferred into kindle format

Reviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on February 13, 2018

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Story itself excellent. Transferring of book into kindle format poor, misspelt words, chapters and paragraphs inserted incorrectly, hard to read at times.

One person found this helpful

Karrenola

A classic.

Reviewed in Japan 🇯🇵 on March 5, 2014

Verified Purchase

If you saw the miniseries Roots, or didn't see it, this work by the late Alex Haley is the best way to begin to understand the continuing severity of problems stemming from the concept of 'race' in America. Highly recommended.

One person found this helpful

Atreyu

こりゃいただけません。

Reviewed in Japan 🇯🇵 on February 21, 2014

Verified Purchase

おそらく水没した商品だと思います。不本意だったのですが半額返金に応じました。

One person found this helpful

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K. Raghunathan

Amazing research

Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on March 5, 2023

Verified Purchase

The first half is gripping, and the second half is informative but less gripping. However, as you finish the book and read the final chapters, it is really mind blowing to understand the amount of hard work and research that has gone into tracing the roots of the black population in the US. The author has done a commendable job in describing the quiet life of the natives, disrupted by the greed and selfish insensitivity of the white people with a few exceptions here and there. Reuires patient reading, but worth the time spent to understand how the crudely civilisation has evolved.

One person found this helpful

R Helen

Very powerful story

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 22, 2017

Verified Purchase

As a story, Roots really draws you in. It's an emotional tale of man ripped from his country and his family and brought to America as a slave. I was really drawn to the character of Kunta Kinta and Alex Haley has written an exciting, sometimes tragic, sometimes heartwarming, story of his family ancestors. I wanted the book to be true, but from the first few pages, I began to get suspicious that the book couldn't possible be all true. How could the dialogue be so specific if Haley never mentions that he found any diaries or that sort of thing? He obviously couldn't, as the African tribes didn't write diaries. I checked it up on Wikipedia and sure enough I discovered that much of Roots is made up. While the basic story is based on Alex Haley's family history, the rest is really fiction. For me, this was hugely disappointing. Had the book been presented as historical fiction, more like Little House on the Prairie, (also based on Laura Ingalls Wilder's life), I think I would have preferred it, than to be mislead to believe that the whole story is true. Obviously, the book is still powerful. While many of the details may have been created by the author, the experience of Kunta Kinte and the other characters was definitely an experience that many Black Americans shared as slaves in the Old South. But knowing it is supposed to be true and it really isn't, is a bit annoying.

Another thing that really annoyed me, was Haley's way of indicating what was happening in the wider world at the time, his way of presenting all the great historical moments (like the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, etc...) This dialogue, where characters would tell what news they had heard or read, was obvioulsy contrived. No slaves (or anyone at that time, actually) would have spoken about those events the way Haley has them spoken about. It sounds rediculous.

And it seems that Haley didn't do his research well here, either, but rather relied on what he had learned in high school, no matter how inaccrate. For instance, in the book the slaves are all talking about how Lincoln (before he is elected President) is going to free them. But anyone with a little knowledge of Civil War history, knows that Lincoln never said such a thing. He had no intention of freeing slaves and was hardly an abolitionist. There were other Presidential canditates who were much more likely to free the slaves. If the slaves had their hopes on anyone, it would have been Seward or Chase, not Lincoln. Lincoln was a dark horse when he was elected at the Republican convention. He was hardly known outside of Illinois. I doubt any slaves were speaking about him the way they did in this book. It doesn't make sense. And there are many other mistakes, as well. It is very poor history.

But no matter these points, at the end of the day, it is a great story. I couldn't put it down. The parts that take place before the Civil War are much more detailed and better written, then the parts after. Unfortunate really, as I would have liked to know more about his family's experience during reconstruction, but nonetheless, I was hooked, and was really sad to see the story end. For anyone who wants to learn about the Negro experience in America, this book is a must read. I would definitely recommend.

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