The Wrath to Come: Gone with the Wind and the Lies America Tells

The history America never wanted you to read.
'The narrative took my breath away' Philippe Sands
'An extraordinarily and shockingly powerful read' Peter Frankopan
'One of the must-reads of the year' Suzannah Lipscomb
'Brilliant and provocative' Gavin Esler

Sarah  Churchwell examines one of the most enduringly popular stories of all  time, Gone with the Wind, to help explain the divisions ripping the  United States apart today. Separating fact from fiction, she shows how  histories of mythmaking have informed America's racial and gender  politics, the controversies over Confederate statues, the resurgence of  white nationalism, the Black Lives Matter movement, the enduring power  of the American Dream, and the violence of Trumpism.

Gone with  the Wind was an instant bestseller when it was published in 1936; its  film version became the most successful Hollywood film of all time.  Today the story's racism is again a subject of controversy, but it was  just as controversial in the 1930s, foreshadowing today's debates over  race and American fascism. In The Wrath to Come, Sarah Churchwell charts  an extraordinary journey through 160 years of American denialism. From  the Lost Cause to the romances behind the Ku Klux Klan, from the  invention of the 'ideal' slave plantation to the erasure of interwar  fascism, Churchwell shows what happens when we do violence to history,  as collective denial turns fictions into lies, and lies into a vicious  reality.