When Alex Haley's book Roots was published by Doubleday in 1976 it became an immediate bestseller. The television series, broadcast by ABC in 1977, became the most popular miniseries of all time, captivating over a hundred million Americans. For the first time, Americans saw slavery as an integral part of the nation's history. With a remake of the series in 2016 by A&E Networks, Roots has again entered the national conversation. In Making Roots, Matthew...

"It is difficult to think of two twentieth century books by one author that have had as much influence on American culture when they were published as Alex Haley's monumental bestsellers, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), and Roots (1976). They changed the way white and black America viewed each other and the country's history. This first biography of Haley follows him from his childhood in relative privilege in deeply segregated small town Tennessee...

An adaptation of Alex Haley's "Roots", in which Haley traces his African American family's history from the mid-18th century to the Reconstruction era.

Follows the Haley family from the post-Civil War era until the more contemporary but still turbulent time of the 1960s and '70s, when Alex himself begins his research into the discovery of his roots.