
Roots
The Saga of an American Family
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $49.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Prentice Onayemi
-
By:
-
Alex Haley
About this listen
Roots is a groundbreaking story of history and family that spanned continents and touched generations. One of the most important books and television series ever to appear, Roots galvanized the nation and created an extraordinary political, racial, social, and cultural dialogue that hadn’t been seen since the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The book sold over one million copies in the first year, and the miniseries was watched by an astonishing 130 million people. It also won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Roots opened up the minds of Americans of all colors and faiths to one of the darkest and most painful parts of America’s past, and we continue to feel its reverberations today.
©1974 Alex Haley. Copyright renewed 2004 by Myran Haley, Cynthia Haley, Lydia Haley and William Haley (P)2023 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
-
No More Lies
- By: Dick Gregory
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1972, during the Black Power Movement, iconoclast Dick Gregory challenged one of the foundations of America itself - its history, which had been written almost exclusively from the white male perspective. In No More Lies, this true trailblazer gave voice to African Americans, speaking their truth about the past and race relations in the United States. No More Lies offers this incomparable satirist’s intellectual, conspiratorial, and humorous spin on the facts.
-
-
Could have been written in 2024
- By Stephanie Brown on 06-14-24
By: Dick Gregory
-
Crusade for Justice
- The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells
- By: Ida B. Wells, Alfreda M. Duster - editor
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 15 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ida B. Wells is an American icon of truth telling. Born to slaves, she was a pioneer of investigative journalism, a crusader against lynching, and a tireless advocate for suffrage, both for women and for African Americans. She cofounded the NAACP, started the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago, and was a leader in the early civil rights movement. This engaging memoir relates Wells’ private life as a mother as well as her public activities as a teacher, lecturer, and journalist in her fight for equality and justice.
-
-
Important person, sing-song narration
- By Judith Evans on 03-05-22
By: Ida B. Wells, and others
-
Uncle Tom's Cabin
- By: Harriet Beecher Stowe
- Narrated by: Richard Allen
- Length: 20 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Uncle Tom's Cabin opens with a Kentucky farmer named Arthur Shelby facing the loss of his farm because of debts. Even though he and his wife, Emily Shelby, believe that they have a benevolent relationship with their slaves, Shelby decides to raise the needed funds by selling two of them - Uncle Tom, a middle-aged man with a wife and children, and Harry, the son of Emily Shelby's maid Eliza - to a slave trader.
-
-
More on Richard Allen
- By Steven on 07-12-10
-
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
- As Told to Alex Haley
- By: Malcolm X, Alex Haley
- Narrated by: Laurence Fishburne
- Length: 16 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Experience a bold take on this classic autobiography as it’s performed by Oscar-nominated Laurence Fishburne. In this searing classic autobiography, originally published in 1965, Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand, and Black empowerment activist, tells the extraordinary story of his life and the growth of the Human Rights movement. His fascinating perspective on the lies and limitations of the American dream and the inherent racism in a society that denies its non-White citizens the opportunity to dream, gives extraordinary insight into the most urgent issues of our own time.
-
-
it's Nearly perfect
- By Kerry on 09-16-20
By: Malcolm X, and others
-
The Color Purple
- By: Alice Walker
- Narrated by: Samira Wiley
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Celie has grown up poor in rural Georgia, despised by the society around her and abused by her own family. She strives to protect her sister, Nettie, from a similar fate, and while Nettie escapes to a new life as a missionary in Africa, Celie is left behind without her best friend and confidante, married off to an older suitor, and sentenced to a life alone with a harsh and brutal husband. In an attempt to transcend a life that often seems too much to bear, Celie begins writing letters directly to God.
-
-
Wow!
- By elizabeth h correa on 05-19-20
By: Alice Walker
-
Leaves of Grass
- The Original 1855 Edition
- By: Walt Whitman, American Renaissance Books
- Narrated by: Sam Torode
- Length: 4 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Walt Whitman self-published "Leaves of Grass" in 1855, he rocked the literary world and forever changed the course of poetry. In subsequent editions, Whitman continued to revise and expand his poems - but none matched the raw power and immediacy of the first edition. This volume presents the 1855 "Leaves of Grass" in its entirety, unchanged, along with Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous letter to Whitman.
-
-
A brilliant classic
- By M.Biblioswine on 12-02-18
By: Walt Whitman, and others
-
No More Lies
- By: Dick Gregory
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1972, during the Black Power Movement, iconoclast Dick Gregory challenged one of the foundations of America itself - its history, which had been written almost exclusively from the white male perspective. In No More Lies, this true trailblazer gave voice to African Americans, speaking their truth about the past and race relations in the United States. No More Lies offers this incomparable satirist’s intellectual, conspiratorial, and humorous spin on the facts.
-
-
Could have been written in 2024
- By Stephanie Brown on 06-14-24
By: Dick Gregory
-
Crusade for Justice
- The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells
- By: Ida B. Wells, Alfreda M. Duster - editor
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 15 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ida B. Wells is an American icon of truth telling. Born to slaves, she was a pioneer of investigative journalism, a crusader against lynching, and a tireless advocate for suffrage, both for women and for African Americans. She cofounded the NAACP, started the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago, and was a leader in the early civil rights movement. This engaging memoir relates Wells’ private life as a mother as well as her public activities as a teacher, lecturer, and journalist in her fight for equality and justice.
-
-
Important person, sing-song narration
- By Judith Evans on 03-05-22
By: Ida B. Wells, and others
-
Uncle Tom's Cabin
- By: Harriet Beecher Stowe
- Narrated by: Richard Allen
- Length: 20 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Uncle Tom's Cabin opens with a Kentucky farmer named Arthur Shelby facing the loss of his farm because of debts. Even though he and his wife, Emily Shelby, believe that they have a benevolent relationship with their slaves, Shelby decides to raise the needed funds by selling two of them - Uncle Tom, a middle-aged man with a wife and children, and Harry, the son of Emily Shelby's maid Eliza - to a slave trader.
-
-
More on Richard Allen
- By Steven on 07-12-10
-
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
- As Told to Alex Haley
- By: Malcolm X, Alex Haley
- Narrated by: Laurence Fishburne
- Length: 16 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Experience a bold take on this classic autobiography as it’s performed by Oscar-nominated Laurence Fishburne. In this searing classic autobiography, originally published in 1965, Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand, and Black empowerment activist, tells the extraordinary story of his life and the growth of the Human Rights movement. His fascinating perspective on the lies and limitations of the American dream and the inherent racism in a society that denies its non-White citizens the opportunity to dream, gives extraordinary insight into the most urgent issues of our own time.
-
-
it's Nearly perfect
- By Kerry on 09-16-20
By: Malcolm X, and others
-
The Color Purple
- By: Alice Walker
- Narrated by: Samira Wiley
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Celie has grown up poor in rural Georgia, despised by the society around her and abused by her own family. She strives to protect her sister, Nettie, from a similar fate, and while Nettie escapes to a new life as a missionary in Africa, Celie is left behind without her best friend and confidante, married off to an older suitor, and sentenced to a life alone with a harsh and brutal husband. In an attempt to transcend a life that often seems too much to bear, Celie begins writing letters directly to God.
-
-
Wow!
- By elizabeth h correa on 05-19-20
By: Alice Walker
-
Leaves of Grass
- The Original 1855 Edition
- By: Walt Whitman, American Renaissance Books
- Narrated by: Sam Torode
- Length: 4 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Walt Whitman self-published "Leaves of Grass" in 1855, he rocked the literary world and forever changed the course of poetry. In subsequent editions, Whitman continued to revise and expand his poems - but none matched the raw power and immediacy of the first edition. This volume presents the 1855 "Leaves of Grass" in its entirety, unchanged, along with Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous letter to Whitman.
-
-
A brilliant classic
- By M.Biblioswine on 12-02-18
By: Walt Whitman, and others
-
War on Peace
- The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence
- By: Ronan Farrow
- Narrated by: Ronan Farrow
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
American diplomacy is under siege. Offices across the State Department sit empty while abroad, the military-industrial complex has assumed the work once undertaken by peacemakers. We're becoming a nation that shoots first and asks questions later. In an astonishing account ranging from Washington, DC, to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and North Korea in the years since 9/11, acclaimed journalist and former diplomat Ronan Farrow illuminates one of the most consequential and poorly understood changes in American history.
-
-
Well Timed and Authoritative:
- By JC on 04-24-18
By: Ronan Farrow
-
Gotham
- A History of New York City to 1898
- By: Edwin G. Burrows, Mike Wallace
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 67 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Gotham, Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace have produced a monumental work of history, one that ranges from the Indian tribes that settled in and around the island of Manna-hata, to the consolidation of the five boroughs into Greater New York in 1898. It is an epic narrative, a story as vast and as varied as the city it chronicles, and it underscores that the history of New York is the story of our nation. The events and people who crowd this audiobook guarantee that this is no mere local history. It is in fact a portrait of the heart and soul of America....
-
-
THANK YOU!!!!!
- By Stephen F (SPFJR) on 09-29-18
By: Edwin G. Burrows, and others
-
12 Notes
- On Life and Creativity
- By: Quincy Jones
- Narrated by: JD Jackson, Quincy Jones
- Length: 5 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wisdom and musings on creativity and life from one of the world’s most beloved musicians, producers, and mentors, Quincy Jones. 12 Notes is a self-development guide that will affirm that creativity is a calling that can and should be answered, no matter your age or experience.
-
-
I lived these notes with Quincy
- By Thomas Bähler on 04-29-22
By: Quincy Jones
-
D DAY Through German Eyes
- The Hidden Story of June 6th 1944
- By: Holger Eckhertz
- Narrated by: P. J. Ochlan
- Length: 6 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Almost all accounts of D-Day are told from the Allied perspective, with the emphasis on how German resistance was overcome on June 6, 1944. But what was it like to be a German soldier in the bunkers and gun emplacements of the Normandy coast, facing the onslaught of the mightiest seaborne invasion in history? What motivated the German defenders, what were their thought processes - and how did they fight from one strong point to another, among the dunes and fields, on that first cataclysmic day?
-
-
A work of fiction
- By John Lindsey on 05-22-16
By: Holger Eckhertz
-
Send a Runner
- A Navajo Honors the Long Walk
- By: Edison Eskeets, Jim Kristofic
- Narrated by: Jim Kristofic
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Navajo tribe, the Diné, are the largest tribe in the United States and live across the American Southwest. But over a century ago, they were nearly wiped out by the Long Walk, a forced removal of most of the Diné people to a military-controlled reservation in New Mexico. Send a Runner tells the story of a Navajo family using the power of running to honor their ancestors and the power of history to explain why the Long Walk happened.
-
-
A brilliant story that needed to be told
- By haynes9 on 05-16-21
By: Edison Eskeets, and others
-
The Warmth of Other Suns
- The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
- By: Isabel Wilkerson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 22 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.
-
-
Superior non-fiction
- By Lila on 05-20-11
By: Isabel Wilkerson
-
Autobiography Collection: Henry Ford, Nikola Tesla, and Benjamin Franklin
- By: Henry Ford, Nikola Tesla, Benjamin Franklin
- Narrated by: Jonathan Waters
- Length: 17 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This autobiography collection contains My Life and Work: The Autobiography of Henry Ford, My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla, and The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.
-
-
BOOK HAS NO TABLE OF CONTENTS DONT BUY
- By Steve Agnew on 01-28-20
By: Henry Ford, and others
-
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
- An Oprah’s Book Club Novel
- By: Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo, Karen Chilton, Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 29 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the problem of race in America, and what he called “Double Consciousness,” a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois’s words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans—the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers—Ailey carries Du Bois’s problem on her shoulders.
-
-
The Great American Novel is finally inclusive.
- By Margaret on 12-28-21
-
Someone Knows My Name
- By: Lawrence Hill
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 18 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Aminata Diallo is the beguiling heroine of Lawrence Hill's Someone Knows My Name. In it, Hill exquisitely imagines the tale of an 18th-century woman's life, spanning six decades and three continents. The fascinating story that Hill tells is a work of the soul and the imagination. Aminata is a character who will stir listeners, from her kidnapping from Africa through her journeys back and forth across the ocean.
-
-
Rich in history and moral messages
- By Ariela on 10-14-09
By: Lawrence Hill
-
Evicted
- Poverty and Profit in the American City
- By: Matthew Desmond
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Evicted, Princeton sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they each struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Hailed as “wrenching and revelatory” (The Nation), “vivid and unsettling” (New York Review of Books), Evicted transforms our understanding of poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving one of twenty-first-century America’s most devastating problems. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible.
-
-
Former Property Manager
- By Charla on 05-18-16
By: Matthew Desmond
-
The Water Dancer (Oprah’s Book Club)
- A Novel
- By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Narrated by: Joe Morton
- Length: 14 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her - but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he’s ever known. So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia’s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the South to dangerously idealistic movements in the North.
-
-
We Must Always Remember
- By Cammie on 09-28-19
By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
-
The Book of Lost Friends
- A Novel
- By: Lisa Wingate
- Narrated by: Sophie Amoss, Sullivan Jones, Robin Miles, and others
- Length: 15 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the best-selling author of Before We Were Yours comes a dramatic historical novel of three young women searching for family amid the destruction of the post-Civil War South, and of a modern-day teacher who learns of their story and its vital connection to her students’ lives.
-
-
I want more!!!
- By Mrstlg on 04-11-20
By: Lisa Wingate
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Twelve Years a Slave
- By: Solomon Northup
- Narrated by: Louis Gossett Jr.
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this riveting landmark autobiography, which reads like a novel, Academy Award and Emmy winner Louis Gossett, Jr., masterfully transports us to 1840s New York; Washington, D.C.; and Louisiana to experience the kidnapping and 12 years of bondage of Solomon Northup, a free man of color. Twelve Years a Slave, published in 1853, was an immediate bombshell in the national debate over slavery leading up to the Civil War.
-
-
I've waited for this a long time
- By Book Reader on 04-04-13
By: Solomon Northup
-
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
- By: Harriet Ann Jacobs
- Narrated by: Mia Ellis
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Harriet Ann Jacob's autobiography documents her life as a slave and how she attained freedom for herself and her children. Harrowing in its descriptions of sexual abuse, Jacob's slave narrative is notable for the appeal it made to abolitionist women to open their eyes to the realities of slavery. Deemed too shocking for reading audiences at the time, the book was shelved before it was published in 1861 near the start of the Civil War.
-
-
Will not finish it....
- By Karen M. Curry on 11-17-20
-
The African
- By: Harold Courlander
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James
- Length: 13 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The African is Harold Courlander’s critically-acclaimed novel of the slave trade as seen through the eyes of Hwesuhunu. An insightful journey through the volatile frontiers of American slavery, this unforgettable story is the riveting primary source for Alex Haley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Roots.
-
-
stunning
- By Dolores L. Loftin on 09-05-19
-
North and South
- North and South Trilogy, Book 1
- By: John Jakes
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 30 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two strangers, young men from Pennsylvania and South Carolina, meet on the way to West Point.... Thus begins this brilliant novel of antebellum America, spanning three generations and chronicling the lives and loves of two great family dynasties. The Hazards and the Mains are brought together in bonds of friendship and affection that neither jealousy nor violence can shatter - until a storm of events sunders the nation and brings the cataclysm of war!
-
-
Captivating novel of the Civil War
- By 9S on 01-12-13
By: John Jakes
-
Charleston
- By: John Jakes
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 18 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Charleston follows the lives, loves, and shifting fortunes of the Bells - saints and evil-doers mingled in one unforgettable family - from the American Revolution through the turbulent antebellum years to the Civil War and the savage defeat of the Confederacy. Delving into our country's history as only he can, Jakes paints a powerful portrait of the Charleston aristocracy who zealously guarded their privilege and position, harboring dark family secrets that threatened to destroy them all.
-
-
Read this while visiting Charleston
- By Rich Tanguy on 05-13-12
By: John Jakes
-
Alex Haley's Roots: An Author's Odyssey
- By: Adam Henig
- Narrated by: Mark Westfield
- Length: 2 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alex Haley was on his way to becoming the most successful author in the history of publishing. That's when his troubles began. Within a decade and a half following the publication of Roots, Haley managed to alienate most of his fellow writers and at the same time squander most of his wealth. When he died at the age of 70, his estate was auctioned off and his iconic book went out of print. What happened?
-
-
Not
- By Rashida A on 01-14-17
By: Adam Henig
-
Twelve Years a Slave
- By: Solomon Northup
- Narrated by: Louis Gossett Jr.
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this riveting landmark autobiography, which reads like a novel, Academy Award and Emmy winner Louis Gossett, Jr., masterfully transports us to 1840s New York; Washington, D.C.; and Louisiana to experience the kidnapping and 12 years of bondage of Solomon Northup, a free man of color. Twelve Years a Slave, published in 1853, was an immediate bombshell in the national debate over slavery leading up to the Civil War.
-
-
I've waited for this a long time
- By Book Reader on 04-04-13
By: Solomon Northup
-
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
- By: Harriet Ann Jacobs
- Narrated by: Mia Ellis
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Harriet Ann Jacob's autobiography documents her life as a slave and how she attained freedom for herself and her children. Harrowing in its descriptions of sexual abuse, Jacob's slave narrative is notable for the appeal it made to abolitionist women to open their eyes to the realities of slavery. Deemed too shocking for reading audiences at the time, the book was shelved before it was published in 1861 near the start of the Civil War.
-
-
Will not finish it....
- By Karen M. Curry on 11-17-20
-
The African
- By: Harold Courlander
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James
- Length: 13 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The African is Harold Courlander’s critically-acclaimed novel of the slave trade as seen through the eyes of Hwesuhunu. An insightful journey through the volatile frontiers of American slavery, this unforgettable story is the riveting primary source for Alex Haley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Roots.
-
-
stunning
- By Dolores L. Loftin on 09-05-19
-
North and South
- North and South Trilogy, Book 1
- By: John Jakes
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 30 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two strangers, young men from Pennsylvania and South Carolina, meet on the way to West Point.... Thus begins this brilliant novel of antebellum America, spanning three generations and chronicling the lives and loves of two great family dynasties. The Hazards and the Mains are brought together in bonds of friendship and affection that neither jealousy nor violence can shatter - until a storm of events sunders the nation and brings the cataclysm of war!
-
-
Captivating novel of the Civil War
- By 9S on 01-12-13
By: John Jakes
-
Charleston
- By: John Jakes
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 18 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Charleston follows the lives, loves, and shifting fortunes of the Bells - saints and evil-doers mingled in one unforgettable family - from the American Revolution through the turbulent antebellum years to the Civil War and the savage defeat of the Confederacy. Delving into our country's history as only he can, Jakes paints a powerful portrait of the Charleston aristocracy who zealously guarded their privilege and position, harboring dark family secrets that threatened to destroy them all.
-
-
Read this while visiting Charleston
- By Rich Tanguy on 05-13-12
By: John Jakes
-
Alex Haley's Roots: An Author's Odyssey
- By: Adam Henig
- Narrated by: Mark Westfield
- Length: 2 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alex Haley was on his way to becoming the most successful author in the history of publishing. That's when his troubles began. Within a decade and a half following the publication of Roots, Haley managed to alienate most of his fellow writers and at the same time squander most of his wealth. When he died at the age of 70, his estate was auctioned off and his iconic book went out of print. What happened?
-
-
Not
- By Rashida A on 01-14-17
By: Adam Henig
-
The Color Purple
- By: Alice Walker
- Narrated by: Samira Wiley
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Celie has grown up poor in rural Georgia, despised by the society around her and abused by her own family. She strives to protect her sister, Nettie, from a similar fate, and while Nettie escapes to a new life as a missionary in Africa, Celie is left behind without her best friend and confidante, married off to an older suitor, and sentenced to a life alone with a harsh and brutal husband. In an attempt to transcend a life that often seems too much to bear, Celie begins writing letters directly to God.
-
-
Wow!
- By elizabeth h correa on 05-19-20
By: Alice Walker
-
The Spook Who Sat by the Door
- By: Sam Greenlee, Natiki Hope Pressley
- Narrated by: Dion Graham, Natiki Hope Pressley
- Length: 6 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Continuously available in print since 1968, this novel has become embedded in progressive anti-racist culture with wide circulation of the book and hotly debated film. A literary classic, The Spook Who Sat by the Door is a strong comment on entrenched racial inequities in the United States in the late 1960s. With its focus on the “militancy” that characterized the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s, this is the story of one man’s reaction to ruling-class hypocrisy.
-
-
The Book that Threatened the White Establishment
- By Kerr on 06-22-20
By: Sam Greenlee, and others
-
Soledad Brother
- The Prison Letters of George Jackson
- By: George Jackson, Jonathan Jackson Jr. - foreword
- Narrated by: Jonathan Jackson Jr.
- Length: 11 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A collection of Jackson's letters from prison, Soledad Brother is an outspoken condemnation of the racism of white America and a powerful appraisal of the prison system that failed to break his spirit but eventually took his life. Jackson's letters make palpable the intense feelings of anger and rebellion that filled Black men in America's prisons in the 1960s. But even removed from the social and political firestorms of the 1960s, Jackson's story still resonates for its portrait of a man taking a stand even while locked down.
-
-
The narrator brings emotion that can only come from a family member that has truly been affected by this story.
- By Dakota Hoch on 02-07-24
By: George Jackson, and others
-
Uncle Tom's Cabin
- By: Harriet Beecher Stowe
- Narrated by: Richard Allen
- Length: 20 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Uncle Tom's Cabin opens with a Kentucky farmer named Arthur Shelby facing the loss of his farm because of debts. Even though he and his wife, Emily Shelby, believe that they have a benevolent relationship with their slaves, Shelby decides to raise the needed funds by selling two of them - Uncle Tom, a middle-aged man with a wife and children, and Harry, the son of Emily Shelby's maid Eliza - to a slave trader.
-
-
More on Richard Allen
- By Steven on 07-12-10
-
Coming of Age in Mississippi
- By: Anne Moody
- Narrated by: Lisa Reneé Pitts
- Length: 15 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Born to a poor couple who were tenant farmers on a plantation in Mississippi, Anne Moody lived through some of the most dangerous days of the pre-civil rights era in the South. The week before she began high school came the news of Emmet Till's lynching. Before then, she had "known the fear of hunger, hell, and the Devil. But now there was…the fear of being killed just because I was black." In that moment was born the passion for freedom and justice that would change her life.
-
-
A Gripping, Visceral Account of 1960's Reality
- By Philomena on 01-03-13
By: Anne Moody
-
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
- As Told to Alex Haley
- By: Malcolm X, Alex Haley
- Narrated by: Laurence Fishburne
- Length: 16 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Experience a bold take on this classic autobiography as it’s performed by Oscar-nominated Laurence Fishburne. In this searing classic autobiography, originally published in 1965, Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand, and Black empowerment activist, tells the extraordinary story of his life and the growth of the Human Rights movement. His fascinating perspective on the lies and limitations of the American dream and the inherent racism in a society that denies its non-White citizens the opportunity to dream, gives extraordinary insight into the most urgent issues of our own time.
-
-
it's Nearly perfect
- By Kerry on 09-16-20
By: Malcolm X, and others
-
And Still I Rise (Unabridged Selections)
- A Book of Poems
- By: Maya Angelou
- Narrated by: Maya Angelou
- Length: 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Maya Angelou’s unforgettable collection of poetry lends its name to the documentary film about her life, And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS’s American Masters. “It is true poetry she is writing,” M. F.K . Fisher has observed, “not just rhythm, the beat, rhymes. I find it very moving and at times beautiful. It has an innate purity about it, unquenchable dignity.... It is astounding, flabbergasting, to recognize it, in all the words I read every day and night...it gives me heart, to hear so clearly the caged bird singing and to understand her notes.”
-
-
Amazing
- By Jean on 06-04-14
By: Maya Angelou
-
Uncle Tom's Children
- By: Richard Wright
- Narrated by: Adam Lazarre-White
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Originally published in 1938, Uncle Tom's Children, a collection of novellas, was the first book from Richard Wright, who would go on to win international renown for his powerful and visceral depiction of the Black experience. Set in the American Deep South, each of the powerful and devastating stories in Uncle Tom's Children concerns an aspect of the lives of Black people in the post-slavery era, exploring their resistance to white racism and oppression. The collection also includes a personal essay by Wright titled "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow."
-
-
I am Speechless, Absolutely Breath Taking!,
- By Lisalisa on 09-26-20
By: Richard Wright
-
The Last Slave Ship
- The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning
- By: Ben Raines
- Narrated by: Kevin R. Free
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed, the Clotilda became the last ship in history to bring enslaved Africans to the United States. The ship was scuttled and burned on arrival to hide the wealthy perpetrators to escape prosecution. Despite numerous efforts to find the sunken wreck, Clotilda remained hidden for the next 160 years. But in 2019, journalist Ben Raines made international news when he successfully concluded his obsessive quest through the swamps of Alabama to uncover one of our nation’s most important historical artifacts.
-
-
Wow. Just Wow.
- By Pinkhippiechick on 02-11-22
By: Ben Raines
-
A Time to Kill & The King of Torts
- By: John Grisham
- Narrated by: Michael Beck
- Length: 28 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The life of a 10-year-old black girl is shattered by two drunken and remorseless young men. The mostly white town reacts with shock and horror at the inhuman crime, until her father acquires an assault rifle and takes justice into his own outraged hands.
-
-
Lively voices tell gripping plot
- By Paul Cragin on 11-05-12
By: John Grisham
-
Gone with the Wind
- By: Margaret Mitchell
- Narrated by: Linda Stephens
- Length: 49 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, Margaret Mitchell's great novel of the South is one of the most popular books ever written. Within six months of its publication in 1936, Gone With the Wind had sold a million copies. To date, it has been translated into 25 languages, and more than 28 million copies have been sold. Here are the characters that have become symbols of passion and desire....
-
-
Got the Accents Right
- By Noel on 04-27-10
-
Master Slave Husband Wife
- An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom
- By: Ilyon Woo
- Narrated by: Janina Edwards, Leon Nixon
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1848, a year of international democratic revolt, a young, enslaved couple, Ellen and William Craft, achieved one of the boldest feats of self-emancipation in American history. Posing as master and slave, while sustained by their love as husband and wife, they made their escape together across more than 1,000 miles, riding out in the open on steamboats, carriages, and trains that took them from bondage in Georgia to the free states of the North.
-
-
Necessary story well told!
- By Marc W Rhoades on 01-19-23
By: Ilyon Woo
What listeners say about Roots
Highly rated for:
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Billy
- 10-18-23
Favorite
Everyone human being across this planet should hear this book. By far my all time favorite.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Randy William Gravitz
- 10-30-23
I was too young in 1976-77 to watch the mini-series
but I was aware that it was likely the most important show broadcast in the decade. I was 9 or 10 when this aired and I wouldn’t have appreciated the significance. I chose to read and view the mini-series as part of an assignment in my Public History course on popular public history and I’ll write a paper. This is the best book I’ve read/listened to this year. The story will linger in the back of my mind for a very long time. It is genius.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Susanne Lewis
- 04-21-23
Worthwhile.
A saga for the ages. A must read, without which no education can be complete.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- M. G. Hasham
- 05-16-23
Amazing story, excellently read!
I watched the movie as a kid. Always wanted to read/listen to the book. What an amazing story with beautiful writing. The narration was superb. Sad, poignant and vivid. Moved me to tears.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Stephan S.
- 02-25-25
Excellent story
Everyone should read the book. It is an excellent look into the lives affected by slavery in the US. It is emotional, heart-breaking, and heart-warming. A story of generational trauma. Excellent narrator.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Ashraf Abaza
- 06-27-23
A masterpiece
The book is so thrilling it’s very difficult to put it down. The narrator was simply amazing.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Eugenia Luck
- 08-01-23
Stunning
Probably the best audiobook I’ve ever listened to. When I wasn’t listening, I was thinking about the characters. Haley’s essay at the end is equally powerful. Also, the reader was very good.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Eadek
- 11-07-23
Blow away the cobwebs- it is a great read
The best audiobook I have ever listened to taking me on a rollacoaster of emotions and learning about mankind and greed. But all is not still not lost ; there is joy , kindness & love seen everywhere in the book which conveys the message of hope…
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Posner
- 12-06-23
Could not stop listening
Narrator does a great job with dialect and moderate voice changes for dialogue. I enjoyed this book immensely.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jenni P.
- 12-25-23
Absolutely incredible
Everything about this is absolutely perfect. His voice, his characters, accents, the emotion in every word is like nothing I’ve ever heard. This story is one of a kind, I don’t even know what to say. It’s heartbreaking and beautiful and infuriating and wonderful. I just finished and am speechless.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!