Alex Haley ROOTS Saga of an American Family 1976 Doubleday, NY FIRST EDITION by Alex Haley - 1976

Generic, 1976. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. 1976 signed and inscribed first edition, Doubleday (garden City, New York), 6 1/4 x 9 3/8 inches tall hardcover in publisher's price-clipped dust jacket, pale orange paper-covered boards over black cloth spine, gilt lettering to spine, viii, 587 pp. Bumping to lower tips of front and rear cover. On the lower title page, nicely signed by the author and inscribed, 'with brotherly love from me and Kunta Kinte's family!' Otherwise, a very good copy - clean, bright and unmarked - in a slightly edgeworn dust jacket which is nicely preserved and displayed in a clear archival Brodart sleeve. Authenticity of signature guaranteed in perpetuity. ~SP38~ [2.5P] Tells the story of Kunta Kinte, an 18th-century African, captured as an adolescent, sold into slavery in Africa, transported to North America; following his life and the lives of his descendants in the United States down to Haley. The release of the novel, combined with its hugely popular television adaptation, Roots (1977), led to a cultural sensation in the United States. The novel spent forty-six weeks on The New York Times Best Seller List, including twenty-two weeks at number one. The last seven chapters of the novel were later adapted in the form of a second miniseries, Roots: The Next Generations (1979). It stimulated interest in African American genealogy and an appreciation for African-American history. Roots faced two lawsuits that charged plagiarism and copyright infringement. The lawsuit brought by Margaret Walker was dismissed, but Harold Courlander's suit was successful. Courlander's novel The African describes an African boy who is captured by slave traders, follows him across the Atlantic on a slave ship, and describes his attempts to hold on to his African traditions on a plantation in America. Haley admitted that some passages from The African had made it into Roots, settling the case out of court in 1978 and paying Courlander $650,000.