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

Alex Haley taught himself to write during a twenty-year stint in the US Coast Guard. He became its first Chief Journalist, a position he held until he retired in 1959 to become a magazine writer and interviewer. His first book was The Autobiography of Malcolm X, after which he spent twelve years researching and writing Roots, which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.
Alex Haley died in Seattle, Washington in 1992.