Jack Cashill's new book, Hoodwinked: How Intellectual Hucksters Have Hijacked American Culture," attacks many established works, including Alex Haley's famous book, Roots. To label Cashill's new book as "controversial" would be an understatement. In fact, author Cashill seems determined to stir up trouble, probably in an effort to sell more books.
One must admit, however, that Cashill quotes proven facts and excerpts from others' works, including two leading genealogists, Gary Mills and Elizabeth Shown Mills. He also claims that Roots contained 81 passages that had been lifted from Harold Courlander's The African, as well as the plot and certain characters.
Here is an excerpt from the new book:
HOODWINKED
Alex Haley's immaculate rootsAlex Haley's "Roots: The Saga of an American Family," first published in 1976, generated extraordinary reviews and spectacular sales, here and abroad. The mini-series based on the book captured more viewers than any series before it. And Haley won a special Pulitzer Prize for telling the true story of a black family from its origins in Africa through seven generations to the present day in America.
The only problem is that the book was a fraud from beginning to end.
You can read much more about this controversy on WorldNetDaily.com at http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45084.
