Haley, photographed at his boyhood home in Henning, Tennessee, circa 1980. Alexander Murray Palmer "Alex" Haley (August 11, 1921 - February 10, 1992) was an American writer known as the author of the 1976 book Roots: The Saga of an American Family. The book was adapted by ABC as a TV mini-series of the same name and aired in 1977 to a record-breaking 130 million viewers. It had great influence on awareness in the United States of African-American history and inspired a broad interest in genealogy and family history. His first book was 1965's The Autobiography of Malcolm X, a collaboration through numerous lengthy interviews with the subject, a major African-American leader.In the late 1970s, Haley had begun working on a second historical novel based on another branch of his family, traced through his grandmother Queen; she was the daughter of a black slave woman and her white master. He did not finish the novel before dying of a heart attack.at the age of 70. At his request, the novel was finished by David Stevens and was published as Alex Haley's Queen. It was subsequently adapted as a movie of the same name in 1993. In later years the validity of certain aspects of the book were questioned by scholars and critics but Haley retained both his Pulitzer and National Book Award.