I’m answering this request for a review because I just recently recommended this book to my daughter to read. She is almost 15 and is a voracious reader, everything from Shakespeare’s MacBeth and Rowling’s Harry Potter (vol. 5) to Peter George’s Dr. Strangelove in the last couple of months alone. She needs books that really engage her, and Gone With the Wind will do just that. This book is set before, during, and after the American Civil War, and was written in 1936, so it reflects the sentiments of the early 1900s as well as the Civil War.
Scarlett O’Hara isn’t a particularly nice heroine, but she’s entirely engaging and the book is mesmerizing. Scarlett is resourceful, smart, and manipulative as she meets and marries several men (she is widowed each time), all in order to allow her beloved home, the plantation called Tara, to persevere and to prosper.
Why do I want my daughter to read it? Because I loved it when I read it, because for those of us in the United States (at the very least) this book is a cultural icon and reading the book will engage, entertain, and educate.