Studio 360

American Icons

Gone with the Wind

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.

Mitchell's book beat out another novel about a slaveholding family - William Faulkner's classic Absalom, Absalom - for the 1936 Pulitzer. WNYC's Karen Frillmann explores how the story's racial politics play out in 2006, and asks why Gone with the Wind still speaks to today's readers and viewers.

Voices in the Story

Nancy Lemann

New Orleans-born novelist Nancy Lemann

Buy Nancy Lemann's Malaise (Voices of the South)

Eric Foner

Professor of History at Columbia University.

Pat Turner

Professor of African American Studies at UC Davis

Buy Turner's Ceramic Uncles and Celluloid Mammies: Black Images and Their Influence on Culture

Studio 360's American Icons is made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: great ideas brought to life.

Studio 360 is a co-production of Public Radio International and WNYC New York Public Radio, and is funded in part by Ken and Lucy Lehman, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lily Auchincloss Foundation, DK Eyewitness Travel, Herman Miller and Design Within Reach. Studio 360's American Icons series is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Our series on creativity and science is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Our series on Underground Heroes is supported in part by the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.