Roots

The radical, bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning account of Alex Haley's own twelve-year search for his family's origins – a powerful memoir, a history of slavery and a landmark in African-American literature. With a New Introduction by David Olusoga Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award 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. About the Author Alex Haley was born in Ithaca, New York in 1921. He grew up in the South, the son of Simon Alexander Haley, a teacher, and the former Bertha George Palmer, also a teacher. In 1939 Haley began a twenty year service with the coast guard. It was during his service that he began to write. After World War II, Haley was able to petition the Coast Guard to allow him to transfer into the field of journalism, and by 1949 he had become a First Class Petty Officer in the rate of Journalist. He later advanced to the rank of Chief Petty Officer and held this grade until his retirement from the Coast Guard in 1959.