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Roots
by Haley, Alex
- Used
- good
- Hardcover
- Condition
- Good/Fair
- ISBN 10
- 0385037872
- ISBN 13
- 9780385037877
- Seller
-
Silver Spring, Maryland, United States
Item Price
NZ$171.49NZ$128.62
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc, 1976. Book Club Edition. Hardcover. Good/Fair. Alex Gotfryd (Back jacket photograph). viii, 688 pages. DJ somewhat worn/soiled with small edge tears/chips, some wrinkling to endpapers. Inscribed by the author. Haley's epic about several generations of African-Americans was made into a blockbuster television mini-series. Perhaps more than any other single work, this one changed American perceptions of the past. Alexander Murray Palmer Haley (August 11, 1921 - February 10, 1992) was an American writer and the author of the 1976 book Roots: The Saga of an American Family. ABC adapted the book as a television miniseries of the same name and aired it in 1977 to a record-breaking audience of 130 million viewers. In the United States, the book and miniseries raised the public awareness of black American history and inspired a broad interest in genealogy and family history. Haley's first book was The Autobiography of Malcolm X, published in 1965, a collaboration through numerous lengthy interviews with Malcolm X. He was working on a second family history novel at his death. Haley had requested that David Stevens, a screenwriter, complete it; the book was published as Queen: The Story of an American Family. It was adapted as a miniseries, Alex Haley's Queen, broadcast in 1993. In 1976 Haley published Roots: The Saga of an American Family, a novel based on his family's history, going back to slavery days. It started with the story of Kunta Kinte, who was kidnapped in the Gambia in 1767 and transported to the Province of Maryland to be sold as a slave. Haley claimed to be a seventh-generation descendant of Kunta Kinte, and his work on the novel involved twelve years of research, intercontinental travel, and writing. He went to the village of Juffure, where Kunta Kinte grew up and listened to a tribal historian (griot) tell the story of Kinte's capture. Haley also traced the records of the ship, The Lord Ligonier, which he said carried his ancestor to the Americas. Haley stated that the most emotional moment of his life occurred on September 29, 1967, when he stood at the site in Annapolis, Maryland, where his ancestor had arrived from Africa in chains exactly 200 years before. A memorial depicting Haley reading a story to young children gathered at his feet has since been erected in the center of Annapolis. Roots was eventually published in 37 languages. Haley won a special Pulitzer Prize for the work in 1977. The same year, Roots was adapted as a popular television miniseries of the same name by ABC. The serial reached a record-breaking 130 million viewers. Roots emphasized that black Americans have a long history and that not all of that history is necessarily lost, as many believed. Its popularity also sparked a greatly increased public interest in genealogy. In 1979 ABC aired the sequel miniseries, Roots: The Next Generations, which continued the story of Kunta Kinte's descendants. It concluded with Haley's travel to Juffure. Haley was portrayed at different ages by Kristoff St. John, The Jeffersons actor Damon Evans, and Tony Award winner James Earl Jones.
Synopsis
Tracing his ancestry through six generations - slaves and freedmen, farmers and blacksmiths, lawyers and architects - back to Africa, Alex Haley discovered a sixteen-year-old youth, Kunta Kinte. It was this young man, who had been torn from his homeland and in torment and anguish brought to the slave markets of the New World, who held the key to Haley's deep and distant past. Originally published: Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday, 1976.
Reviews
On Oct 12 2010, Fluffygcataolcom said:
Great book
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Details
- Seller
- Ground Zero Books (US)
- Seller's Inventory #
- 55935
- Title
- Roots
- Author
- Haley, Alex
- Illustrator
- Alex Gotfryd (Back jacket photograph)
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Good
- Jacket Condition
- Fair
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- Book Club Edition
- ISBN 10
- 0385037872
- ISBN 13
- 9780385037877
- Publisher
- Doubleday & Company, Inc
- Place of Publication
- Garden City, NY
- Date Published
- 1976
- Keywords
- African-Americans, Families, Afro-American Studies, Emancipation, Freedom, Alex Haley, Slavery, Inscribed
Terms of Sale
Ground Zero Books
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About the Seller
Ground Zero Books
Biblio member since 2005
Silver Spring, Maryland
About Ground Zero Books
Founded and operated by trained historians, Ground Zero Books, Ltd., has for over 30 years served scholars, collectors, universities, and all who are interested in military and political history.
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Much of our diverse stock is not yet listed on line. If you can't locate the book or other item that you want, please contact us. We may well have it in stock. We welcome your want lists, and encourage you to send them to us.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- Inscribed
- When a book is described as being inscribed, it indicates that a short note written by the author or a previous owner has been...
- Book Club Edition
- A generic term denoting a book which was produced or distributed by one of any number of book club organizations. Usually the...