Volume 23, Number 18 · November 11, 1976
An American Family
By Willie Lee Rose
Roots
by Alex Haley
Doubleday, 587 pp., $12.50
Roots is about lineage and blood, history and suffering, and the need to know about these things. The need-to-know is Alex Haley's. Why and how the author of The Autobiography of Malcolm X has driven himself for a dozen years to find his own bloodlines, or one strain at least, is almost as intriguing as the saga that has been the result. The costs have been high in time and energy. The author could hardly have guessed twelve years ago that the work would earn him a million dollars and be one of the major publishing events of the year, but he scoured libraries and archives in two continents, consulted university professors of African history and languages, and read widely in history and anthropology. He lectured freely along the way to keep himself going.
Review, 3349 words
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