Taylor discusses the enormous success and popularity of Roots in the following essay, paying particular attention to the feeling of connection to the past that it offered so many rootless people.

I acknowledge immense debt to the griots of Africa— where today it is rightly said that when a griot dies, it is as if a library has burned to the ground The griots symbolize how all human ancestry goes back to some place, and some time, where there was no writing Then, the memories and the mouths of ancient elders was [sic] the only way that early histories of mankind got passed along . for all of us today to know who we are

With these words, Alex Haley concludes the Acknowledgments page of his ambitious work, Roots. The tribute to the African griots he paid here, and in the final chapters of the book—not to...