American Icons: <em>Gone with the Wind</em>

For a time, Margaret Mitchell’s saga of the antebellum South was the second bestselling book next to the Bible. Gone With The Wind had it all: charming debutantes, a sacred family home, an indomitable heroine, the destruction of a society, and a whopping love story. Her book beat out another novel about a slaveholding family –- William Faulkner’s classic Absalom, Absalom –- for the 1936 Pulitzer. As part of our series on American Icons, WNYC’s Karen Frillmann takes a look at how its racial politics play out in 2006, and why Gone with the Wind still speaks to today’s readers and viewers.