Sarah Churchwell SOLD OUT The Wrath to Come: Gone with the Wind and the Lies America Tells

Margaret Mitchell’s epic novel, Gone With the Wind, became an overnight bestseller when it was published in 1936 and the film won 10 Academy Awards. In this fascinating analysis of the book’s history and legacy, the Professorial Fellow in American Literature and Chair of Public Understanding of the Humanities at the University of London suggests it represents as truth an alternate historical reality that was deliberately created inthe aftermath of the Civil War to justify American slavery, and how much these national mythologies can explain about American life today, from its racial and gender politics, to controversies over Confederate statues, the resurgence of white nationalism, and even the violence of Trumpism, including the assault on Capitol Hill last year.