Roots - Inscribed

New York: Doubleday. Fine in Fine dust jacket. 1976. First Edition. Hardcover. A fine book with tight binding likely unread. Housed in a Fine dustjacket, with a small closed tear at the top of the back cover, otherwise without any other obvious defects and minimal wear, a fine collectable copy. First edition, later issue. The book is also signed and inscribed to Elizabeth Taylor Ellis, the grandaughter of J Will Taylor (Member of the House of Representatives from Tennessee 2nd district, serving from March 4th 1919 - Nove 14 1939). The inscription reads, "Oct 9 1988 To Elizabeth Taylor Ellis, granddaughter of J Will Taylor, A Tennessee statesman - Alex Haley". Signature was obtained during a meeting at the Appalachia Museum in Andersonville in 1988. ROOTS is a saga of dislocation and strength in the face of brutality, reckoning with the complexities of ancestry in the African diaspora caused by the transatlantic slave trade. It begins in 1750 on the coast of The Gambia, West Africa, tracing the lives of multiple generations up to the birth of Haley himself. Michael Eric Dyson explains what ROOTS represented to the descendants of slaves in the United States: "No longer were we genealogical nomads [. ] Haley wrote black folk into the book of American heritage and gave us the confidence to believe that we could find our forebears even as he shared his own" ("Haley's Comet"). The 1977 television adaptation was a major cultural event, with an audience of nearly half the American population (NEW YORK TIMES). Washington Post said it is, "the most highly acclaimed book of our time" ; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 688 pages; Signed by Author .